


you're the one that brings the sun

by ladyeggplant



Series: bro but make it soft [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Surfers, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, bro but make it soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-26 23:11:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20397706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyeggplant/pseuds/ladyeggplant
Summary: When Beau asks him, “So do you wanna stay?” Mat knows he should say no.





	you're the one that brings the sun

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "I Dare You" by the Regrettes. Alternatively titled "bro? bro." Alternatively alternatively titled "research what research"
> 
> Very much a work of fiction. Especially (probably) everything about Jordan Eberle.

When Beau asks him, “So do you wanna stay?” Mat knows he should say no. 

Mat knows he needs to finish packing up all the shit in his AirBnB, needs to shower, needs to check into his flight, call his mom, and go home. Mat knows it’s his last summer before moving clear across the continent for school, knows his parents are putting together a huge going away party at the end of August, knows he only has a little while left before the rest of his life kickstarts.

It’s hard, though, to remember any of that when Beau’s caught in a slant of sunset, dripping with ocean water and slightly breathless, ears pink. It’s hard to remember anything past bright eyes squished into wedges by a big, easy grin that knocks the _no_ right out of Mat’s stammering mouth. Like it’s so easy for Beau to just ask.

So when Beau asks, “So do you wanna stay?” Mat knows. He knows.

“Yeah,” Mat says, feeling his own mouth stretch. “Yeah, shit, _of course.”_

-

He and a bunch of his high school buddies had a plan to drive down the coast the day after graduation, because Fabbs has some cousin or family friend that has a timeshare in Malibu like, _right on the beach._ There was going to be day drinking and chasing after miles of sun kissed skin, living on the beach. They were gonna go on one of those cheesy bus tours that drive past celebrities’ houses, take pictures in front of the Hollywood sign, and go to like, _so many taco trucks._ There was this one night, on Fabbs’ back porch, where they stayed up until like 4am talking about everything they were gonna do, how fucking cool it was going to be, and Mat had fallen asleep in on a deck chair, scrolling through travel blogs.

Except, then Fabbs’ parents deicide to surprise him with a Carribean cruise as a grad present, so he’s out, and so is his cousin’s timeshare, and then Josty gets fucking mono, and Chabby’s all, _idk dude this trip seems SUPER cursed._ Then suddenly, everyone’s pulled out, leaving Mat stranded with a nonrefundable deposit for surf lessons and a newly purchased bag of travel sized toiletries. 

It kind of kills him, the way they were all so ready to drop the whole trip, like none of them even really wanted to go in the first place. Like they hadn’t stopped mid-coffee pour, remembering everything they’d spent hours talking about, and smiled just because they couldn’t help it. Like they hadn’t fallen asleep every night thinking about it. Like after a soul crushing last semester of school, after the near constant grind of high school and the ever looming nebulous threat of college, they’re all fine. Like they don’t feel as if they’re on the brink of becoming fucking feral.

“So just go anyway,” his sister says, draped upside down on the sofa in the family room with her hair pooling against the carpet.

“Who the fuck goes to Malibu alone?” he fires back, jerking the controller like it’s somehow going to save Link from getting pummeled by the weird dog chick from Animal Crossing.

“Serial killers and losers, probably.” She shrugs. “But if you want to go, you should still go.”

No. No way. There’s just something so fucking sad sounding about going on vacation alone, no one to talk to, no one to blame at 3am when they punch in the wrong location on the Uber app, no one to kick his ass whe he’s passed out on the bathroom floor from the night before. Mat might not be a complete train wreck; he earned his full scholarship into Pratt’s School of Architecture. He’s loaded a dishwasher or two in his life. There’s a difference, though, between those clean cut practical things and organizing his own vacation alone to another country where he doesn’t know a single soul. So yeah, _no way._

Except _no way_ turns into randomly checking flights in bed at 3am, just...because. In another tab, he finds a decently priced casita (whatever the fuck that is) with great reviews, and the dates that match up with the flights he was looking at are miraculously open. It’s not in Malibu or Laguna or Venice or any of the places he and the guys talked about going, but a small sliver of beach and boardwalk called Litore. Suddenly his phone is buzzing with email confirmations as slices of 6am sun streak in through his blinds, eyes burning.

He doesn’t tell his parents he’s leaving until he’s carrying his packed bag downstairs and his mom freezes mid-towel fold on the family room sofa. “Uh,” he says, “wanna give me a ride to the airport?”

Needless to say, she’s not thrilled.

He eats his weight in mini bags of pretzels and starts three different movies, not able to follow a single one, jiggling his foot the entire flight. It doesn’t feel like he can breathe until he’s well out of baggage claim and headed towards the taxis, a blast of oppressively hot air hitting him like a brick wall the second he’s through the automatic doors, and it’s the first thing he’s felt besides queasy nerves in hours, days, possibly months.

His host Shannon, a woman with obscenely shiny hair, meets him at the curb as the taxi pulls up. The casita is a squat little block of stucco behind a small but pretty looking Tudor home that has an honest to god lemon tree hanging over the small gated brick path leading around to the backyard. Shannon’s really nice, and thorough in showing him exactly how to use the shower, before handing over the keys and a square folded piece of paper with the wifi password and her cell number if there’s an emergency. Nearly the second she leaves, Mat dumps his stuff and nearly sprints to the beach.

The last reach of sunset is just skirting along the horizon line when Mat snaps a picture on his phone that’s like, actually unreal looking. He drops it in the group chat, renamed ‘4 chodes & Barz’—all it earns him is a stream of _fuck u_’s in varying sizes, shapes, and emojis. There’s a text from his mom to be safe, a text from his sister about the Kardashians, and a text from his dad asking how to use the smart TV in the family room. His chest feels full and heavy; he has to put away his phone before he does something stupid like tear up in public.

He breathes in as the wind picks up, letting it fill every part of him.

-

Since the surf lesson deposit is non refundable, Mat has to go, even if it wasn’t really his idea. Not that it’s not cool—it’s super cool, but he knows he’s going to suck at it, and now he has to suck alone. Also, the girl behind the counter has him sign a release form saying his family won’t sue the company if he like, gets eaten by a shark or some shit.

_LOLOLOL ur so dead,_ his sister texts him as he waits by the lockers for his instructor. 

The shop sells an array of boards for land and sea, gear for everything from fishing to scuba diving to parachuting, every surface made up of sticker-plastered wood. There’s a wall of intricately painted longboards behind the register, and Mat’s trying to discreetly take a picture of the one with Betty White smoking the fattest blunt on it when he hears, “...thought it was supposed to be like, six guys?”

Mat spins around in time to see the shop girl shrugging her tattooed shoulders at the instructor standing by the counter. Mat’s heart slams against his chest. _“Beau?”_

Beau whips his head up. And he smiles.

-

That last time Mat saw Beau, they were both a couple of weedy grade nines, all odd angles in ill fitting clothes. Beau had been metal mouthed with oversized features he hadn’t quite grown into yet, hair drowning in thick over-perfumed gel that would flake off over everything, thin and short but you’d never know judging by the way he filled every room he walked into. It was a half-semester long student exchange for Mat’s immersive French class, living in a small suburb outside of Montreal. The last time Mat saw Beau, he was in a huge puffy parka thrown over pajamas, boots unlaced at 5am in the snow, waving goodbye as Beau’s dad pulled away from the curb to take Mat to the airport.

There had been the promise to keep in touch, but they were fourteen going on fifteen, suddenly in the thick of high school, and the texts that came every few days came every few weeks, every few months. There are moments, spots of time, where Mat’s thumb hovers over Beau’s name in his contacts, alone in his car, on line at the store, drunk in bed at 3am, but he’s always stunted by the awful, impulse consuming thought of, _what the fuck do I even say?_

Beau’s filled out, shoulders thick and tapering off into a slim waist all held up by powerful looking legs. His hair is soft and touchable now, polished by the sun and washed free of any products in whispy cowlicks that makes Mat’s fingers twitch.

“Dude, that sucks,” Beau tells him after Mat explains everything. They’re walking down the path through the dunes, slowly with Mat clumsily carrying his rented board. It’s somehow both heavier and lighter than he expected it to be—as easy to lift as a textbook, but big and awkward to hold under his arm without feeling like a poser. He feels people watching, knows they can all tell that Mat clearly has no idea what he’s doing. It doesn’t help when Beau bumps their shoulders together and nearly sends Mat sprawling into the sand, and doesn’t even notice. “But you’re here! Not a lot of people have, y’know, the balls to travel alone.”

Mat kind of wants to say that it sort of feels like he’s always alone. That he keeps most parts of himself hidden from anyone and everyone. The awful parts, the sad parts, the parts that are too weird to let anyone see. It’s there, constant, underneath even full to bursting moments of belly cramping laughter, 3am Taco Bell runs, first kisses and last kisses, under every stitch of happiness is that small, quiet ache of loneliness that blooms heavy the second he forgets to keep it in check.

But there’s no way to say that without sounding like, SUPER emo. So.

“Yeah,” he shrugs and follows Beau onto the beach. “I guess.”

-

Beau shows him the basics, how to position himself on the board, how and where to stand. Also wetsuits are weird? But wearing one is kind of cool, and even though he feels stupid pretending to paddle on sand, Beau is right next to him giving it 100%, not caring if the people walking by stop and stare at them as he shouts stuff like, “Go—paddle paddle paddle UP UP UP!” Eventually, Mat stops caring, too. It’s almost like being fourteen again, without the all-consuming horror of actually still being fourteen.

“Alright!” Beau says, clapping his hands to punctuate his huge smile, “Time to hit the water.”

Mat blinks. “What.”

“Yeah, man,” Beau says, picking up his own board. “You got the positions down—it’s time to try ‘em out there.”

He motions to the ocean, like it’s not _the ocean._ Mat goes, “Uh.”

“Did you think,” Beau asks, “that the surf lesson wouldn’t include like, actually surfing in the actual water?”

“Kind of?” Mat admits, face scrunching, and Beau laughs—full bodied laughter with his head thrown back and an arm clutching at his stomach. A blush prickles across Mat’s already sunbitten skin, but he’s smiling, too, because Beau’s laugh is so deep and loud it echoes down the beach. “Are you sure these aren’t like, shark infested waters?”

“Okay one,” Beau holds up a finger. “Sharks don’t come this close to the shore except in like, one in a million freak accidents. Two—waters can’t be shark infested, they literally live here. And three, get your ass in the water Barzy!”

-

It’s bad.

Most of the time it feels like he’s just guzzling down gallons of saltwater, eyes and sinuses burning, ears clogged and teeth chattering because even though it’s sunny Southern California, the water is freezing. Beau has him ducking under what feel like fifty foot waves, and any attempt at standing is almost immediately met with flailing and some very unfortunate high pitched screaming.

Mat spits out a mouthful of water, whipping the wet hair out of his eyes as his lungs heave for air. “Dude, I suck.”

Beau’s sitting on his board all zen-like, moving with the waves. “I mean yeah, but it’s okay, you know?”

Mat doesn’t know. He struggles back up onto the board, trying to blink the salt water out of his eyes.

Ever since Chabby’d first brought up the idea of taking surfing lessons, Mat had harbored these small, private daydreams of paddling out into big, beautiful cerulean waves and just taking to it as natural as breathing. And the instructor (a blonde Hemsworth-y Austrailian with a cleft chin and three decades of gnarly experience) would marvel at Mat’s effortless ability, and when he and all his friends finally went back home they’d tell everyone, _but Barzy was so fucking good, man, it was crazy!_

In the face of his reality, those daydreams hunch guiltily under the steady chant of self-defeat straight up yodeling inside of his skull.

“I mean, the fact that you’re even in the water is huge, man,” Beau says over the crush of waves. “I’ve had people who took one bad tumble and they immediately went back to shore. I’ve had people who couldn’t even get in the water. You’re like, really trying, even if you kind of suck right now.”

Mat’s breath evens out, warm breeze pushing between them, heavy with late afternoon. The crowds on the beach have thinned out to lazy sunbathers who fell asleep under ugly umbrellas, a couple huddled together despite the heat, some teenagers blasting Post Malone on their wireless speaker. Pockets of sunset catch in the surface of the water, glittering behind Beau, who’s still smiling, and Mat’s zapped with the crystalline realization of where he is, expanding inside of him like breath.

Mat gets into position to paddle as a small wave starts to roll through, Beau screaming his head off so loud people are probably staring. Mat pushes his weight onto his hands and hops up, wobbling just slightly as he finds his center and rides. It’s the closest, he knows, that he’ll ever get to flying, gravity suspended for a split moment where it barely feels like his feet are even touching the board, barely feels the force of the wave underneath him, moving him. It’s like he’s swallowed the sun, bright and bursting through every molecule. 

“Mat!”

He wipes out like two seconds later, hitting the water hard enough to knock the breath out of his body, skin stinging from impact. It takes a second, because he can’t tell which way is up, can’t tell where his body ends and the water begins, and just as his lungs start to pull inside of his chest in want of air it’s like instinct kicks in, head popping through the surface with a brutal gasp that almost immediately turns into a hacking cough.

“Mat!” Beau is shouting, and when Mat spins around in the water, his board is right there, waiting for him to grab it. Mat’s eyes are still burning, refusing to focus through all the seawater. “Yo, are you—”

“Fuck, did you see that!” Mat calls back, pushing hair out of his eyes, grin splitting his face in half. “Did you see? I was standing!”

-

They dry off in the sunset, laughing and peeling themselves out of their wetsuits.

“So how long have you been doing this?” Mat asks, trying to slick his hair back, knowing it’s long enough that it’ll curl at the ends if he lets it air dry.

“This is my first summer doing real lessons,” Beau says, shaking his head to get the last of the water out of his ear. “But my aunt used to live out here, so I started surfing when I was like, twelve or thirteen? And now I’m taking classes here in the fall, so I can keep working at the shop, can keep giving lessons, you know? Figure stuff out.”

“That’s cool,” Mat says, then worries that the way he said it sounded like, mocking or something. “Like, obviously you love surfing, so.”

“Yeah,” Beau says, single word holding the weight of everything behind it, all the other things Beau wants to say as he pushes his feet further under the sand, grinning softly. Sunlight is caught in his wet eyelashes, and for a second Mat can’t breathe. Then Beau’s looking right at him, and Mat feels caught. “Hey, come out with us tonight.”

“Um,” Mat says. 

“Like, me and some of the other shop people, and also some people who work the boardwalk. We’re going to this bar—it’s casual, not like crazy LA shit. We shoot pool and give Ebs shit when he leaves early and if Casey gets super drunk he tries to sing Piano Man—it’s a good time and you should come.”

“Yeah?” Mat asks, unable to keep the waver of hope out of his voice. 

“Yeah, yes, totally,” Beau gushes. “I still have your number—I’ll text you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Mat echoes, and when Beau stands and offers Mat a hand up, he takes it.

-

Mat didn’t really bring clothes meant for going out, because without his friends he didn’t really figure he’d be like, hitting up the bars or clubs or whatever. Does he really want to be that guy at a bar in cargo shorts and slides? He falls back onto the small bed tucked in the corner of the room, images of all his best jeans and sneakers, and _fuck_ the brand new shirt from Zara he got for the grad party circuit that would’ve been _perfect._ He rolls onto his front and promptly falls off the bed.

His groan warbles up from the floor just as his phone starts buzzing where it’s charging on the nightstand.

It’s Beau, with the address of the bar, which Mat thinks he can probably walk to. He scrolls up; the last time they talked was almost two years ago. Beau had sent him a super weird pic of erotic Sonic fanart that Mat remembers immediately sending to everyone else he knew. He snorts, rolling onto his back, mind rolling back to images of Beau with his wetsuit half off, pooled around his waist as he danced to a song that group of kids had been blasting, making them laugh. Making Mat laugh.

He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, hard enough to hurt. “Fuck.”

-

The bar has no name, just a neon sign flashing BAR BAR BAR above the dark doorway. Mat stares up at it, wondering if it’s too late to just turn around and go back to the casita. Or if it’s too late to find the nearest H&M and get something at least trendy-ish looking, instead of his plain t-shirt and shorts. Now that the sun’s gone down everything feels sharper, including that doubt needling at some nerve inside of him with awful, nauseating precision. He’s not going to know anyone aside from Beau, who he only barely talked to today, and they probably card here even though he’s fucking eighteen and its completely legal in Canada and—

“Barzy!”

Mat twists around, Beau bounding down the sidewalk with one arm waving, light blue shirt unbuttoned down past the point of no return, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A strand of shells and beads centered by a gold pendant is set against the hollow of his throat, sheen with sweat. Mat’s eyes burn.

“Sick slides,” Beau says, and when Mat looks down he realizes they’re wearing the exact same pair of sandals. When he looks up again, Beau is close and still smells like ocean, salt and sunblock and sweat. Beau shoves Mat through the door with persistent hands. “C’mon—did you eat? They’ve got fuckin’ amazing nachos here.”

-

The nachos are amazing, dripping with cheese and jalapenos and chili, stealing messy greasy bites between sips of strong rum and coke. The bar itself is strange and dark, wood paneled walls sparsely decorated with stolen traffic signs and pictures of celebrities that, upon closer inspection, have very clearly forged signatures (unless Steve Buscemi really does dot his i’s with little hearts). There are well worn pool tables at the far end of the bar, crooked dartboards and neon Budweiser signs hanging near the lifesize horse statue, all ending with a small alcove for the bathrooms. Instead of signs indicating which is the men's room and which is the ladies, there’s just a framed stock photo of an egg on each door.

Mat’s head spins, pinned against the bar between Beau and Marty, who took one look at Mat’s feet when Beau introduced them and started chanting “Slides gang! Slides gang!” Mat might’ve felt better about Marty’s acceptance of his shoe choices if Marty wasn’t wearing actual, literal jorts. Mat didn’t even know those were a real thing people wore—he always kind of assumed they were just like, a meme.

“Fuckin’ Casey won’t let me near the juke,” Marty snaps, glaring over at the sharp angled blond in the corner essentially wrapped around the glowing jukebox. “Swear to god, if he puts on even one Billy Joel song—”

“This happens,” Beau tells him, close to Mat’s ear, “literally every time we come here. Yo, Ebs!”

Ebs is a walking five o’clock shadow with an easy, half lidded gaze and gap-toothed smile. Mat assumes Ebs isn’t his real name, which is sort of stressful, because Mat doesn’t want to just start throwing around nicknames like they’ve been buds for years.

“Barzy, this is Ebs,” Beau says, slapping Ebs on the back. “Ebs works at the burger place I was telling you about.”

“Hey, man,” Mat tries on an easy drawl, offering his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, same,” Ebs volleys back, not making an effort to raise is voice over the blaring music, so Mat has to strain to hear him. “Beau’s told me all about you.”

Mat frowns and thinks he must’ve misheard, because that doesn’t make any sense, but then Beau’s wrapped an arm around his shoulder, crushing Mat into sidehug. “Barz paddled out for the first time today—stood up and everything!”

“And he’s wearing slides,” Marty says, pointing down. 

Ebs raises a mildly impressed eyebrow, and Mat flushes, admitting, “I wiped out pretty much as soon as I got up.”

Ebs opens his mouth like he’s about to say something when a familiar piano riff wafts over the speakers, and he pivots his head to glare in the direction of the juke, “Who the shit keeps giving Casey quarters?”

“Freakin’ Clutter, man,” Beau says, rolling his eyes. “Casey asked for change of a twenty and Clutter just gave it to him.” He brings his glass to his lips. “Some men just like to watch the world burn.”

“There’s definitely a ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ joke somewhere in there,” Marty says, pointing with the lip of his bottle. “But I’m not sober enough to find it.”

“Christ,” Ebs says, already turning to stalk over. He shoves his beer into Mat’s hands. “I’ll be back.”

-

“So how do you know each other?”

The shop girl with the tattoos sidles up to him at some point when the general disdain for Billy Joel turns into a loud, rousing rendition of ‘Uptown Girl’ around the juke, Beau having joined in, knowing every word. Mat’s trying not to stare at her ink because he doesn’t want her to think he’s creepy or something, but he’s definitely drunk and the flowers capping her shoulders look like they’re moving.

“Uh,” Mat starts, shaking himself out of it. “I did this cultural exchange thing for my French immersion class and stayed with his family when I was like, fourteen.”

“So you speak French? Fluently?”

“Uh,” he says, “Yes?”

“You don’t sound too sure about that,” she laughs.

He ducks his head. “I’m pretty rusty.”

“Say something,” she demands.

“No, no.” Mat waves a hand. “I’m telling you, I’ve really let it go—can’t conjugate for shit anymore.”

“Well the only French I know is, _voulez-vous coucher avec moi?”_ She grins, cheeky, and Mat blushes, even though he knows it’s just a song. Of course it’s also the exact moment Beau walks up behind her, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline.

“Your accent is awful,” Beau tells her, and she whips around to shove at his shoulder. He snorts, letting himself be moved. “Anders is looking for you.”

“Ugh,” she ducks down, hiding behind Beau. Mat looks around, trying to pick out who Anders might be in the crowd. “He wants me to open tomorrow ‘cause Devon called out. I’m not fucking doing it—I told him I’m not fucking doing it.”

“Better hide then,” Beau warns her, and she takes off in the direction of the bathrooms. Mat watches her go, hair swishing behind her in a dark, glossy wave, and when he looks up Beau’s usual exclamation point of a face is pointedly blank. He says, “Layla’s a cool girl.”

“Who? Oh,” Mat blinks, face heating. “No, yeah, she’s funny. She was telling me about that dude who puked on your counter last week.”

“God,” Beau groans, memory flooding his face in a dramatic grimace that stretches into a huge grin. “What’s worse is that’s not even the first time that’s happened.”

-

Mat...is drunk.

Not so drunk that he can’t hold himself up, or so drunk he’s gonna blackout, but a warm loose-limbed drunk where he can’t really remember why it would be a bad idea to nuzzle into Beau’s shoulder. Drunk enough that he keeps finding ways to touch Beau, arms brushing, feet bumping, Mat giving a good shove when Beau makes a bad joke. Drunk enough that he can’t stop staring at the small engraved starburst in the center of Beau’s pendant, fingers twitching at his sides, wanting to reach out and touch it.

People filter in and out of their conversations—Mat can’t really keep names straight anymore. He asks, “God, how did so many Canadians end up in Southern California?”

“There’s a few Americans. And Leo’s Russian.” Beau nods to the older dude behind the bar, then squints. “Or like, Finnish or Estonian or something. Actually, you know what? I have no idea, but he’s definitely not Canadian.”

Mat snorts, swaying on spot and bumping into Beau accidentally on purpose, drink spilling a bit onto Beau’s shirt. He drops his glass onto the bar. “Oh, fuck, sorry!”

He tries wiping at the breast pocket of Beau’s shirt where his rum and coke has made a huge dark stain, but Beau swats his hand away, laughing. “Dude, it’s fine.”

“Oh god, I ruined it,” Mat groans, lifting up the hem of his own t-shirt to try and blot at the stain. Someone across the room wolf-whistles. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Beau clears his throat. “It’s really fine. Hey, really, stop.”

Mat’s not sure if his face can burn any hotter, realizing that he’s made a scene, people looking over at them. He stands up straight, running hands through his hair over and over again. “Sorry, sorry, really—fuck.”

-

Beau walks him back to the casita, ambling down the streets, flushed even with a nighttime breeze carrying the smell of the ocean across the pavement. Everything’s so warm. He’s so warm. Beau looks warm, face and ears pink, skin sheen with sweat that glows off of him every time they pass under a streetlamp or storefront.

“Yo, they have 7-Elevens here?” Mat gapes at the familiar logo down the block, framed by palm trees.

Beau shoots him a bemused look. “Pretty sure they’ve got 7-Elevens everywhere.”

“Dude, I want a slurpee, like, so bad,” Mat tells him, shaking Beau’s shoulders with both hands. “Can we get some, please?”

Beau doesn’t need a lot of convincing, and the shock of the frigid air inside 7-Eleven is enough to make Mat shiver, but not enough to keep him from getting the biggest size cup imaginable and filling it to the brim in alternating flavors.

“Ebs only likes the Coca Cola flavor,” Beau tells him, wrinkling his nose.

“Dude, honestly, be honest with me,” Mat pauses, turning to face Beau fully. Beau’s eyebrows climb, expression flickering with something Mat can’t name. “Is he a fucking serial killer—who gets the Coke flavored slurpee?”

“That’s what I’m saying—that’s _exactly_ what I’m saying.”

They end up getting, combined, like forty dollars worth of snacks—candy and chips and those mini powdered donut holes Mat opens while they’re still on line to check out. Beau takes one look at him as they walk back out onto the street and goes, “Your puke’s gonna be gnarly.”

“Your face is gnarly,” Mat flat-out lies.

-

After a very long search for Mat’s keys, they bust in through the door, stumbling over each other and dropping the bags of snacks all over the narrow foyer. Mat laughs, Beau’s hand warm and heavy on the center of his back as he steadies himself to keep from crushing the Funyuns. The room’s still a mess with clothes strewn everywhere from Mat’s earlier outfit crisis, but Beau doesn’t mention it as he kicks off his slides and dumps everything in his arms onto the small counter that separates the kitchenette from the rest of the space.

“I haven’t had a slurpee in forever,” Beau tells him. “What even is a blue raspberry?”

His entire mouth is blue. Mat can’t stop staring.

“It doesn’t taste like raspberry, I don’t think. Right?” Beau takes one long suck and then holds the drink out. “Try.”

“I don’t—” Mat tries to say.

“Seriously, try it!” He shakes the plastic cup.

Mat’s trying so hard not to be weird about it, but he can’t get the fact out of his rum rattled brain that this bright orange straw was just in Beau’s mouth, his lips wrapped around the end, his tongue curled along the underside. Mat swallows and leans in, tasting nothing but pure electric sugar before smacking his lips and going, “Tastes like a light socket.”

Beau snorts, and reaches over onto the counter where Mat left his, taking a sip of the now purple concoction, face scrunching. “Ugh, like cough medicine.”

“Still better than Coke, though.”

“Still way, way better than Coke!”

-

They pass out somewhere between the Funyuns and the mini Reeses cups, Beau on the floor with his head tipped back onto the seat of the sofa, snoring open mouthed with his hand still in the box of donut bites. Mat’s slumped over the arm, loosely gripping the TV remote, screen stuck on the Netflix home page when an alarm goes off and he jolts him awake, unfamiliar ceiling coming into focus as Beau swears softly in French somewhere to his right. He rolls his shoulders, side of his neck twinging from being bent at an angle for too long. “Time issit?”

“Early,” Beau breathes. “Don’t worry—go back to sleep.”

It takes a beat for the words to actually filter through the haze settled over his brain, but when it does he struggles to sit up fully. “What…?”

“I got work,” Beau says, moving through the dark room. A blinding sunlight is threatening to slip through the shut venetian blinds, and Mat can already feel the dull throb pulsing behind his eyes. He groans, letting his head fell back. There’s a tug, Beau pulling the remote from his hand and turning the TV off before leaning in, hand on Mat’s chest, whispering, “Come by the shop later, yeah?”

“Mm,” Mat grunts, listening as footsteps wade through the graveyard of plastic bags, the door whining open and then clicking shut, the rhythmic slap of retreating sandals hitting the pavement outside. He never really falls asleep after that, not fully, and the need to piss wins out over letting himself dissolve into the sofa, and he gets up.

-

A shower, handful of Doritos, and Advil take some of the edge off, but the thick unwell feeling coating the back of his throat makes every movement that much slower, every thought that much more sluggish, and it’s not until Beau texts him _food?_ that Mat remembers they’re supposed to meet up. He groans, scrubbing at his stubbled face—he was definitely fucking weird last night. He was too touchy feely, clinging to Beau in front of all his friends, and what the fuck was that joke about Ebs being a serial killer? Christ.

He goes anyway, because he doesn’t really have anything else to do. Beau sends him the address of that burger place, and by the time Mat’s walked there he’s sweat through his shirt and his hair’s been wind whipped into a disaster.

It’s a small stand on the boardwalk with a glaring color scheme of teal and orange, sign reading Barry’s Burgers in big blocky letters. Beau’s sitting at one of the tables with a basket of grease soaked fries and an ungodly mountain of ketchup on a paper plate. He perks up when he sees Mat and shouts, “Ebs, put on another burger!”

“Hey,” Mat said, swinging a leg over the table’s bench. Beau offers him the fries. “Thanks, I’m starved.”

Beau laughs. “How? You ate like five 7-Eleven taquitos at four in the morning.”

“We’ve talked about this, man—anything pre-sleep doesn’t count.”

“_Five_ 7-Eleven taquitos!”

“Those are really good dipped in milk,” Ebs says, sliding a tray with another pile of fries and two thick ass burgers across the table. 

Mat’s so distracted by the deep, empty pull in his gut that he doesn’t register what Ebs said until Beau stresses, “You dip taquitos in milk?”

A shrug. “Only the chicken ones.”

“That doesn’t make what you just said any less fucking revolting, Ebs.”

Mat nearly chokes on a bite of burger, laughing and hacking at the same time.

“Please don’t die,” Ebs pleads, slapping Mat hard on the back. “I don’t want to have to call the cops here twice in one weekend.”

“Oh yeah,” Beau says through a mouthful of fries. “How is Bails?”

“He’s fine,” Ebs says. “He didn’t even need stitches. Just the tetanus shot.”

Mat’s eyes bulge. “What happened?”

Ebs waves a hand. “Some dude tried to stab him yesterday.”

“S’why you didn’t meet him last night,” Beau explains. “He was like, in the ER, or whatever.”

_“Or whatever?”_

“Ebs!” one of the guys from last night shouts from behind the counter. Narrow faced, long limbed, sweating in a grease stained apron and orange bandanna from the depths of the burger stand. “Get your ass back here—we got like, six DoorDash orders.”

“Brock, dude, chill,” Ebs calls back, but he’s moving.

Once he’s out of earshot, Beau leans in and goes, “So like, I don’t think your serial killer theory is just a theory anymore.”

Mat snorts into his soda.

-

“Full scholarship?”

Beau spends the entire afternoon showing him the Litore Boardwalk, a sunbleached circus arranged into neat booths and stands, headshops, magic shops, jewelry vendors, icecream carts, carnival games and a psychic. He can’t believe this place is real, head on a swivel as Beau nudges him along. In between all that, they’ve just been talking.

“Yeah,” Mat tries to sound all like, nonchalant about it. “I uh...got some good letters of recommendation.”

“You don’t get a full scholarship to a private college just from good letters of recommendation.”

Beau’s not wrong, but Mat feels weird talking about how fucking hard it was, how hard he worked, how it all still wasn’t enough to get him into an ivy. So instead he shrugs.

Beau seems to get that he doesn’t really want to talk about it, so he just goes on, “That’s cool, though. I wish I had something I was that passionate about.”

Mat tilts his head. “What about surfing?”

“You can’t make a career out of surfing.” Beau scuffs his sandal against the wood, hands deep in his pockets. “Or, well, you can, but I’m nowhere near that level. And even then, it’s not something you can do forever.”

“So,” Mat asks, “what do you want to do?”

A snort. “Dude, fuck if I know. I was thinking about like, a psychology major or something, or maybe, like, teaching? But I really have no clue.”

“You’d be an amazing teacher,” Mat tells him, a stitch too earnest. He backpedals, “Not that you couldn’t do psychology or business or whatever you wanted. I just think you’d be really good at it. Or whatever.”

“I don’t know.” Beau shrugs. “With my accent...and my English is just okay.”

“Your English is perfect,” Mat scoffs. “Way better than my French.”

“Yeah, well.” Beau’s mouth twitches, a barely there smile. “Your French sucks.”

_“You_ suck.”

Beau leans against the railing. “So, why architecture?”

Mat blinks, squinting out over the beach. He’s been asked that question by almost every person he’s ever known, and he’s given so many different answers at this point he’s lost track. But Mat’s near giddy on sunlight and caffeine, the hours having slipped away through arcade coin slots, the static spaces between pop songs crackling overhead, the gaps between the wooden planks of the boardwalk. 

“I...it’s like, I don’t know, it’s stupid, but we lived in this apartment when I was really little, and it was kind of—whatever, not the nicest.” He feels the words jittering out of him, too excited once they start to spill out to try and stop them. “Then when my mom got a new job and we could move somewhere else—I remember driving all over and looking at all these different houses with them. Then we got to this one place, and it was just land. And they said if they bought it they could build whatever they wanted, and I got super excited. Like I would spend all of recess drawing what I wanted our house to look like. I think there was a ballpit, and like, one of those fireman poles you could slide down?”

“Wow.” Beau eyebrows lift. He’s so golden, steaked through his hair, saturated in his skin, shining in the gleam of his eyes. “Five year old you wanted a stripper pole in your house. What a baller.”

Mat shoves his shoulder, hot to the touch. “Shut up.”

Beau laughs, running a hand through his hair, then asks, “What else did it have?”

Mat tells him.

-

He shoots his sister a text from bed later, showered with the AC blasting. _you won’t believe who i ran into down here_

_Keanue Reeves,_ she responds a second later. _plz tell him i would in no uncertain terms die for him_

_NO u weirdo remember Beau from my exchange stay in mont??_

_oh_  
Oh W O OW  
that’s some like nora ephron shit right there 

Mat’s not entirely sure who Nora Ephron is, but before he thinks to ask or look it up himself he has an incoming text from Beau asking if he wants to come out with him and his friends again tonight.

-

He’s squeezed into a booth between Beau and the wall, four shots and a Long Island Iced Tea deep, and his cheeks hurt from grinning so much, Marty and Ebs across from them, cracked vinyl stuck to the back of his knees.

“Nah, he’s fine,” Marty tells him after Mat brings up Josh getting stabbed. “Shit like that happens all the time to Bails. He’s like, kinda cursed? It’s fine though, we took him to a psychic once and she gave him some crystals to protect him.”

Mat stares. “He was almost stabbed.”

“Exactly.” Beau tips his glass towards Mat. “Almost.”

He watches Beau drain the last of his drink, throat bobbing slowly before he pushes out a loud breath, lips shiny as he shakes the glass, ice cubes rattling around. “I’m getting another—anyone want anything?”

“A sense of purpose,” Ebs sighs, pushing his chin against his palm.

“Let me rephrase,” Beau snorts. “Anything from the bar?”

Marty jingles his own empty glass and Ebs shakes his head, and it’s only when Beau squeezes Mat’s shoulder that he realizes he’s meant to give an answer, too. He startles, head jerking to look up at Beau. “Oh, uh. I’m good thanks.”

He’s smiling again, aching deep in his face as Beau shoots a quick grin, his hand trailing across the Mat’s back as he moves towards the crowded bar. The smile only slips away when he faces forward again to see Ebs and Marty staring at him, and his already flushed skin prickles with an extra edge of heat. 

“What?”

Marty leans forward, swirling a fry through the ocean of ketchup Beau had poured. “Tito didn’t come home last night.”

“Oh,” Mat says. “We got slurpees. And like, half of the snack aisle. And also taquitos.”

“Those go really good dipped in—”

“Swear to god,” Marty cuts him off, “if you say anything but salsa or queso...”

“Honestly, what’s the difference between queso and milk? They’re both dairy, or whatever.”

“Everything. Everything is the difference, Ebs.”

Mat’s phone buzzes, and when he unlocks the screen he’s got a snap from his sister—a selfie of her posing with a cardboard cutout of Keanue Reeves in what looks like a movie theater lobby, judging from the grotesquely patterned and popcorn littered carpet. He looks up at Marty and Ebs, who are still mid-fight and remembers to ask, “Who’s Nora Ephron?”

Marty frowns, tilting his head, then looks at Ebs for confirmation as he says. “Isn’t that some philosophical analyst writer person?”

“Dude,” Anders cuts in, dropping a huge pitcher of water onto their table before hip checking Ebs further into the booth. “You’re thinking of Noam Chomsky.”

-

Beau walks him back to his casita again, and just as they get to the gate he asks, “Hey, so tomorrow’s my day off, and I’m gonna head out early if you want another lesson.”

Mat cocks an eyebrow. “So you’re saying you wanna work for no money on your day off?”

“No.” Beau reaches up to poke at a low hanging lemon. Shannon’s left the white string lights that hang overhead on, threaded across the backyard. They glow in a blurred haze behind Beau, nighttime sounds of crickets and frogs all around them. “I’m saying I want to hang out with you on my day off.”

It leaves Beau’s mouth and squeezes itself through Mat’s ribs and fits right into the deepest part of his chest, warmth flooding every inch of his body from his fingertips to his sunburnt ears.

“I don’t have a board,” is all Mat’s stupid mouth can form, swollen and slow from all the smiling, drinking, and lip biting. “Or any uh, gear, or whatever.”

“I’ll lend you stuff,” Beau says.

“I’m gonna slow you down.”

“I like slow.” Beau shrugs. “I mean, case and point, you’ve met my friends. I asked Ebs what his favorite food was once, and he said gum.”

“Yo.” Mat shakes his head. “He’s such a serial killer.”

_“Such_ a serial killer!”

Mat’s face scrunches with a laugh, and he looks down at his feet, scuffing the bottom of his slides against the pavement. When picks his head up, Beau is watching him, expectant look on his face. So obviously Mat has to say, “What time?”

-

Early. Like, crack ass of dawn early, Beau brimming with an ungodly amount of energy and thrusting a cup of watery coffee into Mat’s hand as he hustles him out of the casita. On the street waiting for them is a busted station wagon with two boards strapped to the rack on top. The front is suspiciously clean compared to the trashed backseat full of fast food wrappers, clothes, and the air freshener dangling from the rearview is so potently piney it makes Mat’s eyes water. He thinks Beau must’ve just opened it.

“Dude,” Beau says, climbing into the driver’s side. “Stop yawning. You’re making me yawn.”

Mat yawns on purpose, and Beau swipes at him.

“Ocean’s two feet away,” Mat grumbles, sinking further down in the passenger seat. He’s reminded of frigid early morning walks to the bus stop with Beau excitedly pointing out every snowman they passed while Mat barely managed to stay upright. “We can just walk.”

“Nah,” Beau says, turning the keys in the ignition, car rumbling to life beneath them. The radio crackles, some top 40 song thrumming through the speakers with a vibrancy too intense for the sun not being fully in the sky. “I know a place.”

-

The coffee kicks in a bit by the time they roll up to a destitute parking lot hidden around the bend of a cluster of bluffs off the faded highway. There’s only one van at the far end, an older woman with a shock of white hair zipping herself up. Beau gives a shout, “Hey, Mona!”

She salutes them before grabbing her own board and heading down through the grassy dunes. In the distance, Mat can see and hear the crash of waves, and his heart starts thudding a little harder, a little faster when Beau whips a wetsuit at him.

“Are we still in Litore?” Mat asks, squinting out over the empty beach as Beau hands him a board. It seems almost otherworldly compared the crowded beach and boardwalk just a few miles back, like the earth split open with seaworn rocks blocking in a strip of empty beach.

Beau lets out a loud _pfft._ “Lit-or?”

Mat’s cheeks burn. “Well how the fuck are you supposed to pronounce it then?

“It’s lee-to-ray,” Beau says slowly, punching Mat’s shoulder. “Dude, you’re such a tourist.”

“Actually I’m a gemini.” All that earns him is another punch. Mat swings back, just barely missing as Beau jumps out of reach and makes a run for the waves. Mat sprints after him.

If the coffee didn’t really wake him up, the water definitely does. He makes some very unfortunate high pitched squeaking sounds that have Beau pointing and laughing loudly at him. It’s so cold—it’s colder than those Montreal mornings wearing three layers of clothes, thermals tucked into two pairs of socks, sucking down thermoses of scalding hot tea and coffee, Beau’s mom’s hot cocoa that she’d make from scratch, so thick it was like drinking a melted chocolate bar.

He still falls, the swell a little too rough. He takes a bad dive on a wave he never quite gets his footing on, and is swept under all the way to the shore, somersaulting the whole way. Beau glides in behind him and scoops up Mat’s board, urging him up. “Before another wave comes, c’mon.”

Mat’s still coughing as he takes the board from Beau and start to limp up the beach. He feels Beau every step of the way, never sliding an arm around his waist but hovering like he’s ready to grab on at any moment. The sand is still cool from the short night under the surface as he falls forward and turns over, lying half on his board and half on the sand, his head pounding in subwoofer _whomp whomp whomps._

“Are you okay?” Beau kneels next to him.

“Yeah,” Mat coughs again, sitting up. He jerks his head, trying to shake the water out of his ear. “Looked bad, huh?”

“I’ve seen some real bad wipeouts,” Beau tells him. “Your’s doesn’t even make the list.”

Mat tries on a smile that probably comes out closer to a grimace. The tremor running through him vibrates in his nerve endings, and he hopes if he’s shaking Beau can’t see it. He’s wiped out so many times by this point, but this one makes him feel like a gong, ringing so hard it’s like he’s blurry even long after the sound’s gone out of him. He wants so badly to jump up and charge back into the water, to prove Beau right about never giving up, but his limbs have liquefied, his joints turned to jelly, stomach rolling like it’s still stuck in the inertia of the wave that took him out.

“Maybe we should take a break, though,” Beau says, eyes sweeping up and down. 

Mat’s throat tightens. Beau’s right. Mat’s not even sure he can manage to stand right now, much less get back out in the water, but it still strings to hear the quiet, placating tone of Beau’s voice. He clears his throat, “You go. I’ll sit a little while.”

He sees Beau’s face split, caught between wanting to stay and wanting to go.

“Seriously,” Mat nudges him. “Go.”

A corner of Beau’s mouth quirks up, and he stands, grabbing his board. “I’ll just catch a few, okay?”

“Go,” Mat stresses, kicking sand at him. Beau rolls his eyes, mouth upturned as he grabs his board and jogs back into the surf.

He hasn’t really had a chance to watch Beau surf, aside from the small slow waves he demo’d for Mat their first lesson, but the second Beau hops up on his board, Mat’s jaw swings open. He cuts through waves like nothing can touch him, turning on a dime, moving like he’s just another part of the ocean. Fingers skimming the water’s surface, sunrise breaking through him, wave curling behind him. He’s...god, he’s incredible, and every stupid flushed feeling Mat has tried so desperately to stamp down bursts up, ringing through his chest clear and bright. A laugh hiccups out of him, hysteria threading through his manic, disjointed thoughts because god. God, _Beau._

When he was living with Beau, fourteen and wrapped up in layers and layers in Beau’s bedroom, it felt small and safe. Simple in its awkward angles, ill fitting and contained to his stumbling tongue trying to roll around conjugated verbs and a tryhard accent.

Now he feels it pouring out of him, reaching as far as the horizon, as wide as all of the sky.

Beau comes out of the water, raking a hand through his soaked hair and smiling from ear to ear, breathing hard. In French, he shouts, “So good!”

_No,_ Mat thinks. _Bad. So, so bad._

-

The rest of Mat’s week passes way too fast. He takes a bus tour of LA, goes vintage shopping for souvenirs in Burbank, Ubers out to Runyon Canyon to hike and thinks he sees a Kardashian. Then, when Beau’s not working, they meet up for dinner or head out to the bar, go back to Mat’s casita and watch bad TV, eat too much food, laugh over the dumbest shit. They don’t talk about Mat leaving.

“My sister says I have to go get dinner at Sur,” Mat half-lies, sprawled out on the sofa. His sister did tell him, under no uncertain circumstances, to either visit one of LVP’s restaurants and take tons of photos, or never come home again. But Mat wouldn’t want to go if he hadn’t watched every single season of Vanderpump Rules with her in their basement, debating the finer points of Tom Sandoval’s skincare regimen and like, when they say “pasta” do they really mean _pasta?_

It’s not that he thinks Beau would judge him in a mean way, or something, but Mat has a horrific flash of being in the bar and getting utterly annihilated by Marty and Johnny and Casey (who literally has no fucking room to talk because he unironically loves watching gameshows 24/7).

“Ugh, Ebs made me go there once. It’s small and it’s always packed.” Beau pauses, then, “The goat cheese balls are really good, though.”

Mat asks, maybe a little too earnestly, “Can we go?”

There’s this flicker of hesitation that strikes across Beau’s face, just for a second before it dissipates as fast as it appears. “Uh, yeah sure. Let me run home and change first.”

“We don’t have to—” Mat starts.

“No, it’s your last night here.” Beau waves a hand at him. “You wanna go, so we’re gonna go.”

-

They Uber to West Hollywood, the last dredges of sunset fading along the skyline as they shuffle inside the restaurant, mood lighting of low purples, blues and pinks enveloping them.

“Christ, it’s like Morocco took a vacation to the south of France and did like, _so much_ cocaine,” Mat leans in to say, the mash of decor nearly hurting his eyes as the hostess shows them to their table.

Beau lets out a _pfft,_ shoving Mat’s shoulder. “Design nerd.”

It’s definitely smaller than it looks on TV, all of the seating low to the ground and music thumping loudly. The waitress has to bend over to hear their orders, cleavage nearly spilling out of her low cut dress with shiny ringlets of hair brushing his shoulder when she leans in. She’s saturated in this sweet, spicy perfume that goes right to Mat’s head, and he keeps asking her to repeat herself because he can’t focus.

When she leaves to get their drinks, Mat looks and sees Beau giving him a wry look. “What?”

“Nothing,” Beau snorts, playing with one of the leaves on the ornate floral centerpiece. “Just cute watching you talk to a girl for the first time in your life.”

“Fuck you,” Mat says, giving Beau’s shoulder a shove. “Layla said the word panties this morning and you literally dropped your iced coffee.”

Beau makes a face. “Jesus Christ—why can’t we just say underwear?”

“Panties,” Mat says, slow and loud just to watch Beau cringe. “Panties, panties, panties—”

“Here’re your drinks, gentlemen,” their waitress says, setting two glasses of over the top cocktails in front of them. Mat’s is nearly neon pink and Beau’s is smoking. “Those goat cheese balls will be right out—anything else I can get for you?”

The ability to fall through the floor, Mat thinks, covering his face, because there’s no way she didn’t hear him. Beau answers for both of them, “I think we need another minute.”

“No problem,” she answers, easy and bright. When Mat looks up from where he’s buried his burning face in his hands, she dips her chin to her shoulder with a wink and says, “And for the record, I think panties is a sexy word, too.”

Beau throws his head back, cackling and not caring that people from other tables are looking at him. Mat sinks down further in his chair.

They gorge themselves on appetizers and cocktails, twisting their necks anytime someone vaguely familiar looking walks through the lounge. For something that tastes like candy, the drinks are strong. So strong. Beau’s wearing another light blue button down, undone at the neck enough to see his necklace peeking out. Mat licks his bottom lip, staring, and he knows he’s staring, but every time he remembers to look away his eyes end up dipping down the long expanse of neck as Beau talks animatedly about the kids he gave a lesson to today. It’s bad enough that Beau actually touches a hand to the little gold pendant and says, “I got it the first day I moved here.”

“What?” Mat snaps upright, brain playing catch up. “Oh. Yeah, I was wondering.”

“It’s supposed to be a good luck charm. See?” Beau says, leaning across the table to Mat can get a better look at it. He doesn’t smell overly perfumed, just soapy and clean with a bit of sweat. Mat swallows. “That’s what the lady said, anyway.”

“Is this the same hack who sold those eighty dollar crystals to Bails?”

Beau sits back down, making a face. “Yo, you’ll see—we’ll take you.”

“Not a chance,” Mat snorts, taking a sip of his water. If he wants to survive this night, he’s gotta make the switch. No matter how tasty those grotesquely colored Pumptinis are.

“Whatever.” Beau rolls his eyes, throwing the napkin in his lap up on the table. “I gotta piss.”

“Baby, stop with the sweet talk, you’re making me blush,” Mat croons, and Beau lobs a half-eaten roll at him before shuffling off to the restroom. Mat watches him go, grinning, and when he looks forward again he sees straight across the lounge to the crowded terrace seating. He takes his phone out to snap a picture for his sister, but stops.

In the thick of tables and people, two guys huddle together on the same side of a booth, framed by a row of white lights and ornate lanterns strung around the nearby tree and looping over to the next. One leans in, whispering something, and the other listens, rapt and grinning from ear to ear. Mat’s mind is still churning from too many cocktails, but slowly it clicks into place just as they kiss, and it’s like all the air has been sucked out of the room. A hand comes up, cupping a stubbled jaw, gold band glinting even in the low light. Mat fumbles his phone, clattering loudly against the edge of his plate, pulse rapid as his eyes struggle to find something, anything else to focus on.

Beau’s back seconds or eons later, hunkering down into his chair. “I thought I saw Jax, but it was just some other ‘roided up dude in a chunky sweater.”

Mat’s mind is still spinning, and he can’t think straight enough to laugh, much less say something back.

Beau frowns. “You okay?”

“I—yeah, just. Too many Pumptinis,” he manages.

“Lightweight,” Beau snorts, but he twists and nods to their waitress, who comes right over. “We’ll take the check when you get the chance.”

“I’ve got it for you right here.” She gives it right to Beau, who’s already got his card out. 

Mat fumbles for his own wallet, Beau waves a dismissive hand at him. “Nah, I got it.”

“No,” the forceful edge of his voice makes Beau and the waitress look at him, and he coughs, trying on a smile before finally wrestling his own card out. “I mean, can we split it, please? If you wouldn’t mind.”

She doesn’t miss a beat, “Of course not, hon. I’ll be right back.”

Beau is still giving him a look as she walks away. “Dude.”

“What.” Mat won’t meet his eyes.

Beau leans in, voice low. “I wanted to like, I don’t know, give you a parting gift or whatever. You could’ve just venmo’d me if it was that big a deal to you.”

“S’fine,” he mutters, looking around the restaurant. “You already paid for the Uber.”

Beau’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t say anything else, and they sit in silence until their waitress comes back, thanking them and wishing them a good night. Beau falls back into an easy, polite aura while Mat feels like a sulky child. He wants to say something when Beau throws down a cash tip, but Beau’s already standing and heading towards the front.

The hostess smiles, teeth impossibly white and straight in a way that makes Mat’s tongue pass over his own uneven top row. “Have a good night, boys.”

“Thanks.” Beau smiles back at her. “You, too.”

-

The Uber drops them back off at the casita, and they’ve been quiet since they left the restaurant, so awkward that their driver catches Mat’s eye in the rearview and winces. Mat realizes how it must look—a sullen couple caught in the aftermath of a fight. His gut clenches, and he can’t look at Beau, even after they’ve climbed out of the car.

This is usually the part of the night where Beau comes in without either of them having to even ask, but there’s something that’s settled between them that Mat knows is 100% his own fucking fault. His fingers twitch at his side as he stamps down the urge to physically reach out and bridge the gap separating them.

“Yo!” 

Ebs is coming down the street, waving an arm, probably a little drunk. There’s someone lumbering behind him in a backwards baseball cap that Mat’s never met, tall and tan. When Ebs starts jogging down the sidewalk to get to Beau and Mat faster, the guy yells, “Don’t run in flipflops, Ebs.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, mom,” Ebs shoots back. “Barzy, you meet Hallsy yet?”

For a second, he thinks Ebs means the singer, before he realizes. “Oh, no. Hey, I’m Mat.”

“Taylor,” Hallsy answers as he walks up, ignoring Mat’s outstretched hand. “Can I use your bathroom? I just drank a whole case of Capri Suns.”

“Didn’t even offer me one,” Ebs says in a way that lets Mat know this is something they’ve been fighting about for a while.

“Yeah, well you didn’t even offer me any of your gum.”

“You hate gum—you said it’s like chewing on human flesh.”

Mat squints at Ebs. “Is that why it’s your favorite food?”

Beau busts out laughing at that, the tension from earlier dissolving as he grabs onto Mat’s shoulder to keep himself from falling over.

-

“Did you guys eat already?” Ebs asks, rifling through the cabinets of Mat’s kitchenette.

“Yeah,” Mat says, not really thinking about it. “We went to Sur.”

“Ugh, the place you fucking begged me to take you to when you first moved down here?” Ebs asks Beau, who turns bright pink and won’t look Mat in the eye. “It’s so overpriced.”

“To you, brand name cereal is overpriced,” Hallsy snaps back, starfished over the recliner. Ebs throws a tiny plastic shaker of cinnamon at his head. “Fucker! Ow!”

“Score!” Ebs says, pulling a box out of the cabinet. “KD. And it’s Spongebob shapes.”

“It’s not KD,” Hallsy grunts, rubbing at his forehead. “It’s Kraft Mac n’ Cheese down here.”

“Man, we’ve been over this—_it’s the same thing.”_

They keep on bickering, and Mat casts a sidelong glance Beau. “So _Ebs_ made you go to Sur, huh?”

“He did,” Beau says, looking away. “He’s just confused. You know how he gets.”

“Uh-huh.” A beat, then, “You know, the first season is on Hulu.”

Beau makes a face. “What’s Hulu?”

“It’s like American Netflix.”

“...but America already has Netflix.”

Mat rolls his eyes. “Do you want to watch it or not?”

Which is how four grown dudes end up cooking five boxes of mac n’ cheese and watching the first few episodes of Vanderpump Rules together. 

“This is so fucking dumb,” Hallsy complains. Beau rolls his eyes, and not in the exasperated but kind of fond way he would at Ebs or Mat, but like he’s genuinely annoyed. Mat bites the inside of his cheek—he doesn't think he’s ever seen Beau hate anyone before, and it’s kind of amazing.

“You’re fucking dumb,” Ebs says without missing a beat as Stassi details the exact ways she would murder Jax if she found out he was cheating on her. He pivots towards Mat and Beau, “You guys’re going to Anders’ bonfire thing tomorrow, right?”

“My flight’s at nine tomorrow night.” Mat winces. “I gotta get a cab by like six.”

Beau sits up. “It starts at three. You can come for a little, right?”

The thought of saying goodbye to Beau on the beach in front of everyone sits like lead in his chest. He’s not sure if he’s going to be able to keep some sappy-ass look off of his face, or hold himself back from pulling Beau into a long, tight hug. Their goodbye in Montreal was supposed to be painless—Mat remembers waking up super early and getting dressed in the dark, tiptoeing his luggage downstairs and sliding into the passenger’s seat. But Beau had him figured out, even back then, charging out of the front door haphazardly dressed and waving goodbye as they pulled away. Mat can see it still when he closes his eyes. 

“Yeah,” Mat nods. “I definitely can.”

-

It’s getting late with Ebs asks, “Can one of you order us an Uber?”

Beau doesn’t look up from where he’s carefully stacking empties on the coffee table into a Natty Ice Taj Mahal. “You two have phones—call one yourself.”

“We broke them.” 

“You both,” Mat asks slowly, handing another can to Beau, “broke your phones?”

Hallsy drags a hand down his face. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“He doesn’t want to talk about it because it’s his fault,” Ebs clarifies.

“My fault? How is it _my_ fault? _You’re_ the one who stole that guy’s hoverboard.”

“Yeah, and you were the one distracting me by yelling the whole fucking time. And I didn’t steal anything—it was an art commune, so it was a communal hoverboard. That means it’s for the community, Halls.”

_Hoverboard?_ Mat mouths at Beau, who shakes his head in a clear, _Dude, it’s better not to ask._

“I guess I’ll just go with you,” Beau sighs, standing. “It’s late.”

Mat can’t ignore the wedge of disappointment that pinches the corners of his eyes as he watches Ebs and Hallsy slip into their sandals, Beau pulling on his Vans. Mat stares at them—are they new? He’s never seen them before, almost offensively white against the dirt dusted tiles of the foyer.

“Thanks for the food, Barz.” Ebs pats his shoulder, and Hallsy waves as they shuffle out the door.

“I’ll text you, yeah?” Beau says, and Mat nods, because of course, and shuts the door behind him. He can hear retreating footsteps, and Hallsy says something distinctly snide Mat can’t quite make out, but he hears Beau’s, “shut the fuck up, dude!” perfectly.

-

Mat wakes up early and cleans. He separates the recyclables from the rest of the trash littering the kitchen into leftover plastic bags. He packs his suitcase tight, carefully wrapping the Christmas ornament of a snowman surfing in a clear bulb that he got for his parents, the pinned butterfly in an ornate frame for his sister.

One egg sandwich and giant iced coffee from the deli on the corner later, he heads for the beach. Mat misses the beaches back home in Vancouver, even if the water isn't quite as bright, even if the shores are super rocky, and he misses his favorite pizza place, misses his parents and his room with his big ass bed. He misses waking up and knowing where everything is, not living out of a suitcase, being able to drive.

But he’s going to miss this, too. He’s going to miss the boardwalk, and the bar, and the heat. His eyes slip shut.

Mat pulls off his shirt, leaving it on the sand before walking into the waves, ducking under and letting the water move through him.

-

He heads down to the surf shop after showering and swinging around to the barber shop Ledds works at. Layla looks up when she hears the door chime, doing a quick double-take before smirking. “Don’t you look nice.”

“Uh,” he looks down at himself; he’s just in a white t-shirt with blue seersucker shorts, his white sneakers he bought on impulse because the slides were getting a bit rough looking from constant use. “Thanks?”

“Your hair,” she clarifies, pointing. “You got it cut.”

“Oh, yeah.” He smiles at her, absently reaching up to touch the side of his head. “It’s too hot to keep it long in the summer, y’know?”

She quirks an eyebrow, but says nothing, just leans to look past him and goes, “Hey Tito, you done for the day?”

“Yeah, I—” Mat turns in time to see the words drop out of Beau’s mouth, big eyes staring. Mat frowns, about to ask what’s wrong when Beau snaps out of it suddenly. “Sick flow, Barz. You don’t look like a bridge troll anymore.”

Mat snorts. “Shut up.”

“No, seriously,” Beau says, reaching out. “It’s got so much bounce—did you mousse it?”

Mat ducks and tries to shove Beau’s hand away, the two of them scuffling in front of the register. He’s got Beau in a headlock when Anders walks out from the stock room and sighs, “Let ‘im go, Barzy. He probably deserves it but he’s the only instructor I have who’s willing to open on a regular basis.”

-

Beau comes out of the locker room in fresh clothes and with his hair pomaded into submission, cheeks pink. He fistbumps Layla and says he’ll see her later, and Mat knows Anders is still talking to him, asking him questions about Vancouver and Pratt and if he’s enjoyed his vacation, but Mat can’t hear him over the loud whir of cogs inside his brain.

When Anders clears his throat, Mat’s attention snaps back to him and his wry glare. Mat coughs. “Sorry.”

Anders rolls his eyes and calls over his shoulder. “You good to close up, Layla?”

“You know it, Bossman.”

“You have my number if you need anything.”

She gives a salute, eyes never leaving the open magazine spread over the counter. Beau nudges their shoulders together after Anders nods for them to head out, and Mat grins, the two of them trailing just a few steps behind.

-

Saturday afternoon has everyone out in full force, spread out on blankets and beach chairs, laughing through bites of hamburgers and hotdogs. Speakers are set up on the graffitied picnic table, and propped up on the benches are giant posterboards the words FUCK OFF CASEY in bold red letters, a print out of his face crossed out underneath. _“Oh come on!”_ he shouts when he sees it while his girlfriend cackles.

Mat ends up tossing a ball around with some of the guys, but the harder they get him laughing the looser his spirals become, one errant pass finding its way into the last reaches of a wave. Beau, like the giant goober that he is, throws his shirt off and sprints into the water, coming out half-soaked and grinning so hard Mat’s cheeks hurt from reflecting him as Shawn Mendes thumps in the background.

He shimmies out of his wet shorts, Marty wolf-whistling at the flash of dark blue boxer briefs. Beau flips him off, knots a towel around his waist, and reaches under to pull them off, too. He lays them out close to the bonfire, then falls back into a foldout chair with a red solo cup. Mat gets himself a water bottle, throat suddenly very dry.

“Barzy, when do you leave?” Marty asks, nudging Mat with his foot before holding out a hotdog in a napkin.

“My flight’s at nine, so I gotta leave in a little while,” Mat answers, trying not to look and sound as fucking like, forlorn as he feels. The sun’s not even really going down yet, and the thought of leaving the beach to load his luggage into an Uber to go LAX is near painful.

“That sucks,” Marty sighs. “We’re gonna miss you.”

It would be really weird to start crying, so Mat just swallows thickly and nods, going, “Yeah, same. Same.”

He doesn’t want to keep checking his phone for the time, but when he sees the minutes slipping away, his foot starts jiggling up and down and his gut winds tighter, even when he’s laughing at Ebs fighting with Hallsy, watching Casey whisper something to his girlfriend and seeing her ruthlessly pinch his nose and pull in retaliation, Marty and Johnny wrestling way, way too close to the grill.

“Hey.” Beau’s hand lands heavy on his shoulder, back in his mostly dried clothes now. When Mat looks up, his chest gives a hard pull as Beau smiles at him. “I’m going on a snack run—wanna get slurpees?”

They amble down the beach instead of walking up to the parking lot and onto the street, taking the long way. They talk a lot of nothing, mindless mouthfiller about so-and-so, such-and-such, all stretched by grins that are only just a little sad. They stock up on chips and boxed pastries, chasers and a copy of Knitter’s Monthly they think will be really funny to give to Leo. All of it topped off with the two biggest slurpees they can manage to hold along with everything else.

When they get back to the fire, Ebs immediately rifles through the bags. “Where’s my milk? Bro, I can’t take tequila shots without milk.”

Beau shoots Mat a significant look, and Mat snorts so hard cherry slurpee sprays out of his nose.

-

Somehow, they end up walking down to the water together, party roaring behind them. The tide is high, rushing to meet their bare feet, so sudden and cold Mat jumps back, high pitched giggle making Beau snort.

Mat knows it’s a bad idea—he has a flight to catch. He doesn’t really want to have to change waiting for his Uber, doesn’t want to get on a plane smelling like ocean, doesn’t want to leave at all. But he still reaches down as a wave rushes around his ankles, and splashes Beau, who shouts, “I just got dry, you ass!”

Beau tackles him, rolling them through rushing water and sand, soaking right through Mat’s thin clothes. He gets a glob of seaweed to the face, a mouthful of salt water, and Beau screaming in his ear. Mat pins him, fully expecting Beau to buck him off or roll them again, but as the wave recedes and the gut aching laughter fades, everything quiets, and halts, sharing a caught breath. Startled blue eyes look up at Mat, and Mat feels an ankle hooked over his calf, a hand clenched in the front of his soaked shirt. 

He rolls off, breathing hard, and gives Beau’s chest one last snap of a backhand. Beau makes a sound between a grunt and a laugh. “Ow!” he huffs, and punches at Mat’s shoulder.

He just lies there and breathes for a moment, feeling the raw rub of sand, the too hot sun, tasting the salt heavy in the air. When Mat opens his eyes, Beau’s sitting up, staring down at him. Then he blurts, “You should stay.”

Mat blinks. “Uh.”

“Like, if you want to stay longer, we have a spare mattress ‘cause Ebs just got a new one, so. You could stay with us—me, Marty, and Ebs. I already talked to them and they’re like, super cool with it. And Bails like, broke his leg in a freak escalator accident, so he’s taking time off from Barry’s, and they’re looking to get another fry cook ASAP, so you wouldn’t have to worry about money or whatever and like, I’ll spot you if you need whatever right away, or—” 

“Beau,” Mat cuts him off, and sits up.

Beau asks the question again.

And Mat says yes.

-

They move Mat’s luggage and there’s some vague talk about putting clean sheets on the spare bed in the morning, but all Mat wants to do is change into dry clothes and grab a hoodie so they can get back to their friends. He calls and cancels his flight, calls his mom, who is palpably sad and worried even over the phone. He wishes he could figure out a way to explain how light he feels, for the first time in a long time, but even if he could, she’d worry anyway. So instead he says _I love you_ and hopes it’s enough.

When they get back to the bonfire, inky blue has suffused through the sky, and Marty raises his cup. “Slides gang!”

Everyone echoes him, red solo cups saluting, and Mat’s face scrunches into one of his manic looking open mouthed laughs that his sister says makes him look like a cartoon villain.

The music dips into something a bit more mellow, a few people filtering out as the night wears on. Leo sits down next to him in an open beach chair, enraptured by the knitting magazine they got him. Quietly, he tells Mat, “It’s such an incredibly underrated art form. The patience it takes...unbelievable, you know?” Mat doesn’t know, but he nods like he does.

“What is this shit, lofi chill hip hop beats to study to?” Marty asks, making a face at the speakers.

“It’s relaxing,” Ebs shoots back.

“This is what he listens to when he cuts up the bodies,” Mat whispers to Beau, who cackles so hard he tips over his beach chair.

Mat falls asleep in his new bed that night with Beau only five feet away in the dark. They’re whispering even though they don’t have to, yawning around pillow muffled laughs. When he wakes up in the morning, he’s not sure where he is for a split second. Then he remembers, and smiles.

-

“Dude, it’s 10am on a Tuesday,” Ebs hisses, sweating over the grill. “What the fuck?”

It had started out slow enough, Ebs and Brock getting him started on register (even though Mat admitted American coins still kind of confuse him), but within an hour everything seemed to boom. Mat doesn’t think he’s ever seen it this busy except for the lunch and dinner rushes. He’s honestly kind of baffled, lifting up his backwards cap to wipe at his forehead. It’s not even noon yet, and he feels like he’s being roasted alive. 

Brock shoots Mat a wry glare. Or, what Mat assumes would be a wry glare if Brock could like, emote. “I have a pretty good guess.”

It’s not like LA is lacking in extremely attractive people working in the food industry—it’s kind of what the entire city is built on. Like, blindingly good looking with perfect tans, clear skin, manicured to perfection from the gloss of their hair to the polish on their toes. So he doesn’t buy it when Brock tells him all these customers are coming to Barry’s just to see him. He’s not like all these shiny people in perfectly crisp clothes and blinding veneers. He’s like, pointedly average.

Brock stares at him, “You’re joking, right?”

“Um, exCUSE me? Can I get some service?”

Mat can tell by the accent before he even turns around that it’s Beau. He turns to lean against the counter on his forearms, scoffing, “I saw you doing handstands on the counter at the shop last week, so don’t even.”

Behind Mat, there’s a thunk that sounds like someone’s head hitting the wall, Brock grumbling, “Christ.”

-

Marty’s house is a blue, sand whipped block of vinyl siding with a front porch badly in need of a paint job, fake shutters and a very sad looking front lawn. The inside matches the out, a blue not bright enough to be a statement and not soft enough to be peaceful, dotted with mismatched wicker furniture, cheap seashore decor, and hardwood floors that crackle with sand whenever someone wears shoes past the foyer. The kitchen is just as sparse, the bathrooms surprisingly clean, but what the inside lacks the short walk to the beach and the well maintained backyard make up for. There’s a teakwood deck Marty says he built himself, an in ground pool, and a very fancy grill all sewn together with stands of lights that make the whole scene look like a home Mat’s never known.

His and Beau’s room is in the furnished side of the basement, small and square and that same blue as everything else. Beau’s bed is in one corner and Mat’s spare mattress in the opposite, a scuffed up dresser and desk in between with a small window up towards the ceiling. It could be any other house, in any other tentacle of suburban sprawl, not even distinguished enough to call ugly. But every time Mat comes through the front door, he feels…quiet. There suddenly aren’t a million things to think about and obsess over, there’s no need for immediate answers; there’s just Ebs, and Marty, and the friends who love to filter in and out like it’s their home too. 

And there’s Beau.

Living with Beau feels a lot like it did when they were fourteen. Even though Mat was living in the guestroom, technically, most nights they fell asleep together on the sofa in the den, or they would stay up in Beau’s room under the pretense of studying. Most of the time, though, they’d scroll through their phones and show each other increasingly funny and weird shit, and Mat would fall asleep in the huge plush beanbag chair next to Beau’s desk, or the few times at the foot of Beau’s bed, feet dangling off the edge, Beau curled into the corner at the head. A lot of stepping over each other, a lot of staying up too late just talking, a lot of everything.

And just like when they were fourteen, Beau is kind of a slob.

At first, Mat feels weird about telling Beau he needs to pick up after himself, because it’s his room. It was his before Mat got there and it’ll be his after Mat leaves, the walls perfumed with the scent of sunblock, the weird French brand of spray-on deodorant he likes to use, the citrusy smell of his hair pomade. His change and receipts are all over the dresser and desk, clothes everywhere, balled up fast food wrappers stuffed into the overflowing wastepaper basket, between Beau’s bed and the frame. And so. Many. Dirty. Mugs.

But like, there’s a limit.

“Dude,” Mat says, holding up the ketchup crusted plate from the floor where all sorts of lint and hair has gotten stuck to it. He’s just come back from a run, still heaving for breath with sweat dripping down his face, his back, and all he wants is to shower and chill but the room fucking smells, and Mat can’t take it anymore.

Beau, lounging back in his bed, moves his phone out from in front of his face. “Oh, my bad, bro. I’ll take care of it in a sec.”

“Now,” Mat bulges, holding the plate out closer so Beau can see, but Beau’s gone back to scrolling through twitter.

“Just put it on the desk and I’ll get it in a minute.”

“No, man,” Mat reaches forward and snatches the phone out of Beau’s hand. “You can’t just like—leave food in here. We’re gonna get ants.”

A shrug. “Ants never hurt anybody.”

“Ants never—” Mat cuts himself off, pinching the bridge of his nose as he inhales, deep and slow. “Please, just clean it.”

“God,” Beau grunts, sitting up. “I forgot how anal you are.”

“It’s not anal to not want ants!” Mat explodes, and when Beau rolls his eyes, he loses it, lunging forwarding and smushing the gross plate against Beau’s stupid fucking face. Limbs fly everywhere, the plate lodging itself between the bed and the wall as the tangle of two fully grown guys rolls in the opposite direction, crashing onto the floor with a thud that shakes the house.

“Yo!” Marty’s voice floats down the steps. “I heard something about anal and then it felt like the Huns were attacking—are you guys okay?”

“Fucking fine!” Beau shoves Mat hard enough that he pushes him off onto a pile of dirty clothes, hitting his head on a crushed soda can. Beau sits up, rubbing his shoulder and glaring at Mat. “Just didn’t realize I was living with Marie Kondo.”

“Marie Kondo would’ve ejected you into outer space by now,” Mat snaps.

“She would _never.”_

Through the door, “...so I can go fight Garth for the mail and not worry about coming home to a dead body?”

“Yeah, Marty, it’s fine,” Beau huffs, and when Mat squints in confusion, Beau explains, “Garth is the old dude who lives across the street. He takes our mail a lot, and Marty’s the only one who knows how to get it back.”

“Isn’t that like,” Mat asks, “super illegal?”

“Yeah, probably,” Beau sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. His hair is sticking out everywhere. “Look, I like, don’t really care about clothes everywhere or whatever. If shit bothers you, you gotta tell me.”

“Okay, but.” Mat sits up fully, crossing his legs. “You shouldn’t need someone to tell you dirty dishes on the floor is gross.”

Beau’s mouth twitches. “Fair.”

A deep sigh, and Mat looks around the room. “After I shower, you wanna go get Taco Bell?”

“Fuck yeah,” Beau hisses, pulling himself up using the edge of his bed as leverage. He holds a hand out for Mat to grab, yanking him to his feet. “I’m gonna try and convince them to fill up an empty milk gallon with Baja blast.”

“If it didn’t work yesterday, what makes you think it’s gonna work today?”

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, Mathew.”

“I don’t think that’s like, statistically accurate, but whatever.”

-

The guy behind the counter takes one look at the two of them, shrugs, and holds out his hand for the jug. “I’m quitting tomorrow,” he says. “I do not give any classification of a shit anymore.”

Which is how they end up walking out of Taco Bell with three bags full of food and a gallon of electric blue Baja blast, which Mat has actually never tried before. One sip makes him feel like his teeth are vibrating. He hacks. “Dude.”

“It’s like a fine cheese,” Beau shrugs, taking a glug and pulling off with a loud exhale. “An acquired taste meant for only the most cultured and mature pallet.”

“There are literal five-year-olds who would be like, _nah man, too sweet.”_

“As opposed to a non-literal five-year-old?”

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

-

They’re at the bar later that week with most of the crew, swapping work horror stories over a plate of nachos. Mat says, through a mouthful, “I finally met the puke dude yesterday.”

“I swear to god,” Anders says, pointing with his bottle. “He hits up every single store on the boardwalk. In a perfectly tailored suit.”

“The suit!” Mat shouts. “What is _up_ with the suit?”

“And he came during the fucking lunch rush,” Ebs groans, leaning back against the bar. “Which have been a hundred times crazier since this kid started.”

Mat blushes, ducking his head. Beau shoots him a look, something complicated crossing his face, punctuated with an eyebrow raise that makes Mat nearly flinch. “It has not—”

“Everyday,” Brock scoffs. “They’re like vultures. Girls, guys, everyone—there was that one drag queen who straight up propositioned him.”

“Shellita Mann,” Ebs says, a touch wistful. Well, as wistful as Jordan Eberle can possibly manage to sound. “A gal who knows what she wants.”

“Yeah,” Hallsy scoffs, “Not you.”

“Ooh,” Beau croons, making a grab for Hallsy’s cheek, hard enough to make Hallsy jerk back. “Don’t be jealous.”

Hallsy lifts his Diet Coke in a mock salute. “Right back at’cha, Anthony.”

-

Beau keeps taking him surfing. Mat’s getting better, standing wobbly on tiny waves and coasting to shore. He catches them perfect sometimes, and it feels like he’s flying. His normal tornado of thoughts about home, about school, about the money in his bank account, about leaving and the weight on his heart—they all lift away and for a bright, incredible moment every atom surges with pure, uncomplicated happiness.

“You’re getting so good,” Beau lies, but Mat smiles and ducks his head anyway as they walk back up to Beau’s car. “Seriously.”

“Thanks,” Mat says. “You’re like, a pretty good teacher, or whatever.”

That earns him a shove to the shoulder, and Mat shoves back.

-

He facetimes with his sister a lot, even though she kind of hates him now.

“Oh look at me, I’m Mat. I just up and decide to move to southern California for the summer even though me and my sister had tickets to see the Jonas Brothers in August, _because I suck,”_ she whines.

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Mat tells her, his phone propped up against the box of poptarts on the kitchen table. “Not even a little.”

“It sounds exactly like you,” Hallsy calls from behind the open fridge door.

“Dude, go home! Ebs isn’t even here,” Mat shouts at him.

His sister cranes her neck. “Who’s that? Is he hot?”

“Absolutely not,” over his fucking dead body would Taylor Hall ever get within thirty feet of his sister. “He’s got a face like one of those fucked up looking monkfish.”

Hallsy glares at him from around the fridge door, chewing on a leftover chicken wing, which he draws across his neck in a throat-slitting motion. A glob of hot sauce plops onto the front of his shirt, and Mat has literally never seen anyone look less threatening.

“Marty’s hot,” she says. “Where’s he at?”

“He’s wrestling our mail from the old dude who lives across the street—long story,” he says, waving a hand at her arched expression. “Also he’s not hot. He’s like, not a dumpster fire, at best.”

“Dude’s a straight up smokeshow. Just because you’ve only got a thing for—” 

He glares at the screen, cutting her off, “His first name is Matt.”

He watches her face contort, caught between disgust and grief when the front door whines open, Marty shuffling through with his hair sticking out every which way. “He stole our Bed Bath and Beyond Coupons, but I got the important stuff.”

“Bed Bath and Beyond coupons are the important stuff,” Hallsy says through a mouthful of chicken, walking over to grab the Land’s End catalog wedged between bills and credit card scams.

Marty squints at him. “Ebs isn’t even here—go home.”

“Yeah, I’m waiting for him, obviously,” Hallsy snaps.

“Oh wow,” his sister’s tinny voice sounds from his phone. “He really does look like a monkfish.”

-

Friday night means the bar is packed, weak AC doing nothing to keep Mat from feeling sticky and uncomfortable in the corner by the horse statue. He thinks maybe he should call it a night, not really in the mood for pool or Marty’s Thumbwrestle Mania being hosted in the big corner booth, but he can’t really go home.

He and Beau came together, because they’d been surfing all afternoon, and they were just chilling at the bar when a girl who looks like she fell out of Laguna Beach in a jean mini skirt and lacquered lipgloss smiled at Beau. So Mat slipped away, and whatever weird swoop of jealousy he might feel gets shelved almost immediately. 

They haven’t really talked about what happens when one of them wants to bring someone home, because who actually talks about that sort of thing? Mat hasn’t really looked over at the bar in a while, for self-preservation reasons, but he’s pretty sure that’s where Beau and the pretty Laguna girl are headed. He finds Mike and Devon at a table, orders himself a plate of mozzarella sticks, and doesn’t look to his left.

Ebs stands a few feet away, staring at Mat, then looking back at the bar, then back and forth again, already narrow eyes closing to slits as something works behind his unhappy expression. Mat feels caught, somehow, can barely pay attention to the classes Devon says he signed up for, and it only gets worse when he sees Casey doing the same thing from where he’s perched on top of the juke.

Mat knows he’s not the most subtle person, but he’s been really trying to keep his stupid mooning faces in check and stamp down the urge to reach out and constantly hold and touch and shove and pull. He feels like he’s trying so hard all of the time, like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin from the effort.

“I gotta take a leak,” Devon announces, and Mike nods a quick _me too_ before they’re bolting out of the booth, and then Anders is sliding in.

“Hey,” Mat says, but his smile fades when Anders doesn’t do anything but stare at him with this weird, squinted expression, like he’s trying to parse through something. “Uh, everything okay?”

“You know it’s cool, right?” Anders says, and Mat blinks. “Like, no one cares. But whatever you’re comfortable with—we get it.”

Mat stares, open mouthed, completely fucking lost.

“You don’t have to hide it, is what I’m saying,” Anders clarifies, which doesn’t clarify anything. “But if you still want to, that’s totally cool and up to you, I just like...want you to know, if anyone gives you shit we’ll take care of it.”

Little half sounds try to form into words, bubbling up out of the back of his throat, but Mat doesn’t know what he wants to say. He can read between the lines, but he still has no idea what brought this on. He finally manages, “Thank...you…?”

Anders smiles, disarming dimples making Mat feel a little less like he’s been whacked over the head. Taking a pull from his beer, Anders says, “I saw Shellita today—she’s trying to organize this drag surf competition for the end of the summer.”

“Now that,” Mat slides back into some semblance of normalcy, “I have to see.”

-

He slips out with Ebs and Casey, who are on a life or death mission for Domino’s cheesy bread.

“I’m gonna get like, three boxes,” Casey says. “It’s so good cold at like, 3am on a Tuesday.”

Ebs starts, “Especially in—” 

“Ebs,” Mat cuts him off, “I swear to Christ, do not finish that sentence unless you want to deal with puke in your shoes for the second time this week.”

Ebs holds his hands up in silent surrender.

This is how they end up still drunk sitting on the curb of the Domino’s parking lot stuffing themselves with like five pounds of cheesy bread, wiping greasy fingers on shirthems and debating who has to go back in and buy drinks.

“So,” Casey says through a mouthful. “Where’s Tito?”

Mat swallows, sucking the garlic dust off of his thumb, and says as casually as possible, “He went home with that girl, I think.”

There’s a super obvious pause that makes Mat look up from the giant marinara sauce stain on the front of his shirt that’s never going to come out. Ebs and and Casey stare at him, chewing thoughtfully.

“So it’s like,” Ebs says slowly, “an open thing?”

“Bro.” Casey backhands Ebs’ shoulder. “You can’t just ask someone that.”

“I’m not judging.” He turns and looks at Mat. “I’m not judging.”

“What...” Mat breathes. He’s so drunk and so confused and okay, now that he’s sitting and his stomach is full he can kind of admit he’s like, a little heartbroken. It’d be easier to ignore that, though, if everyone wasn’t being so pointedly goddamn weird about Beau and this girl. She’s probably really nice. She probably wants to be a veterinarian or something. Probably sighs prettily when Beau kisses her neck, slim hands sliding under his clothes, tugging, wanting without fear of being found.

Something opens in Casey’s expression, sudden and surprised, and he hits Ebs again, trying to convey that something in a very meaningful look. But Ebs is the drunkest out of all of them, and even if he wasn’t, Ebs isn’t exactly the sharpest, so all he can return to Casey is a scrunched, confused frown. Mat watches all of this, heart thudding hard in his chest, throat closing.

“I mean, like, Anders said—”

“Dude,” Casey says, pointed, trying to shake his head imperceptibly, but he’s drunk so everything he does is like, super perceptible. 

“God,” Mat moans, head swimming. He hangs it between his knees, raking fingers through his sweaty hair. How much does everyone know? And they were all talking about it? “Fuck.”

Above him somewhere, he hears Ebs go, “Dude, what?”

Mat feels a warm arm over his shoulder. Casey hisses, “Ebs, _you_ of all people should get it.”

Casey crushes Mat into a sidehug, and on his left Ebs sits down with them on the curb, nudging his shoulder against Mat’s.

-

They go back to the house and Casey’s girlfriend is waiting for him there in scrubs, sitting on the porch with Hallsy talking over the finer points of the latest Kardashian scandal. When they walk up, Hallsy looks at Ebs. “Nuge just set up his massive entertainment center and got the new Smash Bros—we going?”

“I’m going the fuck home,” Casey says, even though Hallsy clearly wasn’t asking him. He grins his huge Cheshire cat grin, turning so his girlfriend can jump off the top step and onto his back, hair slipping out of her bun. He gives Mat a look. “We good?”

Mat nods, and they both shout their goodbyes as they run across the street to their car.

Hallsy shoots Ebs as expectant look. Ebs turns to Mat, like he’s unsure if he should leave him all alone, like he’s some kind of child. Mat tells him, “Go. I’m gonna crash.”

“You…” he’s about to ask Mat if he’s sure, but seeing Mat’s face, he clearly thinks better of it and goes, “Okay, uh. Text me if you need anything.”

Mat leaves Ebs and Hallsy to start loudly wondering if Nuge actually got his shit set up or if it’s going to be like the last time where he didn’t know which input on the TV to switch to. He clunks through the door, kicking his slides off and tossing his keys and wallet on the coffee table, exhaustion pulling down every nerve in his body. Heading down the narrow hallway he rounds the corner, down the basement steps, and pauses outside his door, listening. He doesn’t hear the telltale signs of a hookup, but his hand still hovers over the doorknob, not sure if his heart can take it if he sees Beau wrapped up in that girl when the door whips open, Beau’s pink face filling Mat’s vision.

“Woah,” he says, a beat too late.

“The fuck, Barz.” Beau glares. He’s wearing glasses. Mat’s never seen them before. “You left me with the oldies. All they did all night was talk about their hip replacements and like, Bengay.”

“Uh.” Mat cranes his neck to look into the room. The bed’s not made, but Beau’s laptop is open on the desk with headphones plugged in and a playlist of vine compilations playing, jeans pooled on the floor.

“And then Hallsy was all like, _oh, I think he went home with someone,_ being a dick about it,” Beau rambles. “So I stayed way longer than I wanted to ‘cause I thought you brought someone back here, but then I get here and the house is completely empty.”

“I mean,” Mat swallows, trying to sound normal, “I did have a very sensual experience with a box of cheesy bread.”

Beau stares at him, wide eyed, then shouts, “And you didn’t even bring me any? Fucking whack, man.”

He can’t tell if Beau is actually mad at him over the rush of exhilarating relief that floods his system, so intense it makes his knees wobble and he has to slump against doorframe. “I’ll get you some tomorrow.”

“You better,” Beau says, fire behind his words fading as he shuffles his weight from foot to foot. When he looks up, Mat is struck by those impossibly bright eyes, and feels his face split with a wide, slow grin, because he just can’t help himself. Beau snorts, “Dude, how drunk are you?”

He falls forward, looping his arms around Beau’s shoulders and groaning, “So drunk. Carry me.”

A splutter, a laugh, then, “Fuck off, dude. You’re so fucking heavy.”

“My legs,” he cries, knees buckling, “I can’t feel my legs!”

“Oh my god, stop,” Beau’s still laughing, hauling Mat’s boneless body across the floor and dumping him onto the mattress. He trips over Mat’s backpack near the corner, bracing his arms against the bed with a hand on either side of Mat’s head and one knee awkwardly perched on the edge, giggling, glasses crooked.

“Ugh, get off,” Mat grunts. “You smell like bar.”

“You fucking smell like garlic!”

“Garlic is way better than bar.”

“Oh no,” Beau mock-whines, dropping down onto Mat, “I can’t feel my legs!”

Mat lets out a hard _oof!_ that tapers off into a wheezing laugh, trying to roll Beau off of him, but there’s no escape from starfished limbs, and he’s still so drunk and so tired. He smells oranges. From Beau’s hair, he realizes distantly. His pinned arm reaches around and gingerly slides the glasses off of Beau’s face, folding them in the other and putting them up on the desk chair.

He hears a distant, “Barzy?”

“Mm,” Mat hums, but he’s already slipping, the last thing he feels before conscious thoughts dilute into a dream filtered haze is the solid, too real weight of a body pressing against him.

-

His sister texts him, _stop sending me snaps of the fucking beach we GET IT you’re in PARADISE_

Fabbs texts him, _bro r u gonna be home for chabbys blowout ??_

His mom texts him, _ticket prices are just going to be more $$$ the longer you wait to book flight home….Nana says hi please call her..._

And he knows. He knows.

(His dad texts him to ask if he’s heard of a thing called Google Maps, because it’s really useful and Mat can use it to print out directions to anywhere if he has access to a printer.)

-

“So can you explain to me,” Mat asks, pushing a cart through the tiny minimart stuffed at the end of the stripmall between the laundromat and a liquor store, “why a bunch of Canadians are celebrating America’s Independence Day?”

“Because,” Beau pops up from where he’d been bent over a tub of miscellaneous toys. He’s wearing gigantic plastic sunglasses, tiny LED lights winking in red, white and blue around the frames, an American flag on either side. It goes well with the red, white and blue beer helmet he’s also got on, crooked and tilted back so he can wear both at the same time. “We’re all off, we still got mad mixers from last week, and if we’re gonna bring this country down from the inside then _we gotta blend in.”_

“Oh yeah,” Mat says, crossing his arms, “because the thick French Canadian accent won’t be a dead giveaway.”

“Keep it up.” Beau points a finger right in his face. “And I won’t let you wear my beer helmet.”

-

Mat’s mid-dream about being stuck in an airplane that’s also his high school? Or its supposed to be, maybe? It’s like a classroom plane hybrid of half-familiar faces caught in a thin veil of nostalgia for a place he’s never really been before, heavy glittering chandelier in the middle of the room. Beau is there, a few seats over, stressing out over some assignment, and Mat’s never seen Beau stressed before so the entire dream becomes tinged with panic, but Mat can’t unbuckle his seatbelt, the flight attendant keeps yelling at him to sit still, chandelier shaking so hard crystals start falling off, and he can’t do anything—

There’s a thump, somewhere beyond clouded blur of dream, and the emergency door of the plane opens, blinding light spilling in, and Mat’s standing in his seat trying to wiggle out of the safety belt, screaming at someone to _stop, help, please._

He rolls, feeling something shift beneath him as consciousness breaks through the last surging images of the plane falling to pieces around him in the pitch black of deep space, heart hammering out of his chest and flushing his veins with a useless surge of adrenaline wrapped up in tangled sheets. Clutter is standing over him, so clearcut in the slant of sun it almost hurts to look at him.

Mat croaks, “The fuck...?”

“You’re the only one here,” Clutter says, and drops something on him. It takes Mat a few bleary blinks to realize it’s an apron. “You’re helping me cook.”

He won’t say Clutter scares him, but Clutter is definitely...intimidating. You sort of have to be, Mat supposes, when you double as a bar-back and security at a dive bar. Dark, hawkish eyes always watching, the flash of a silver scar across his mouth, tattoo sleeves covering his huge arms...all wrapped up in an apron and oven mitts as he slides a pan of carefully cubed and seasoned squash, beets and sweet potatoes into the oven for a nice vegan-gluten free option. 

He’s put Mat on Jell-O shot duty, which should’ve been simple enough, but it’s actually super hard to pour hot red and blue liquid into hundreds of tiny paper cups at 7am without spilling shit all over the table and also his boxers.

“How many people are coming to this thing?” Mat asks, eyeing the kitchen, the usually bare space with the well used microwave and toaster having been completely overtaken by bowls and cutting boards, pots and pans, a food processor Mat is sure Clutter had to have brought from home.

Clutter shrugs, walking over a cutting board and bowl of tomatoes, placing them in front of Mat. “As many as we can fit without the cops getting called.”

Mat sighs, and reaches for a knife.

There’s a vat of pasta salad, three trays of seven layer dip, corn salsa, whole corn shucked and ready to be grilled, mac n’ cheese, homemade taquitos, and the fixings for a burger station that includes every topping imaginable like pickled jalapenos and aioli sauce. Mat’s not even really sure what an aioli sauce is, or what the fuck it would ever be doing on a burger, but at the rate Clutter is slicing with what is probably the hugest knife in all of creation….Mat’s not about to risk questioning it.

“Cal, the fuck?” Marty bangs through the side door, arms full of reusable shopping bags filled to the brim with what look like decorations and chips. “Did you terrorize Barzy into being your sous chef?”

“Hey,” Clutter snaps, eyes never leaving the onions he’s dicing. “I was just minding my own business and he started begging me to let him dice tomatoes. What can I say, the kid’s a freak.”

“He’s been working nonstop for the last two weeks straight,” Marty says, and Mat ducks his head. Marty has never made a big fuss about the rent money, but Mat physically cannot let himself mooch off of anyone, much less someone who works as hard as Marty does, putting in ten hour days at the gym he manages. The least Mat can do is grind out a decent paycheck to cover the room and a portion of the groceries. Marty huffs, “He should be out enjoying the sunshine with his boyfriend—”

“Shit!” Mat shouts, jerking his hand back to his chest, knife clattering to the floor. Clutter’s on him a split second, trying to pry Mat’s hand away from where he’s clutching it into the dishrag. He hisses, “Fuck.”

“Yeah, you really nicked yourself,” Clutter says, turning Mat’s hand over, red running across his knuckles. Marty’s behind them, rummaging under the sink for something as Mat’s led over to rinse the cut. “I don’t think you need stitches, though.”

Mat winces, feeling his heartbeat in his fingertip, a small white box he realizes is first aid kit clattering against the counter as Marty flips open the top.

They get him bandaged up, Clutter cleaning and wrapping him with the practiced movements of someone who’s done it too many times before, while Marty grabs him some painkillers from the medicine cabinet. All the while Mat’s carousel brain keeps going round and round with the same thoughts. _He didn’t mean it, it was just a joke, he didn’t mean it._

“I told you you can’t just say shit like that, Marty.”

“I was just joking.”

“That’s not a joke, man.”

Mat lets out a shaky breath, and when he opens his eyes there’s a bowl of sliced fruit in front of him, Clutter telling him, “Eat something, yeah? Marty, go finish setting up and get the fuck out of my kitchen.”

Marty rolls his eyes and puts his hands up in surrender before standing, giving Mat’s shoulder a squeeze and pat before heading back out the door with his bags. Mat brings a cube of watermelon to his mouth with his good hand, wondering how noticeable his blush is, his flittering gaze. He can feel Clutter staring.

“They all think you’re dating.”

Mat’s head snaps up. Clutter’s leaning back against the sink with his arms crossed, eyes searing into Mat from behind his thick framed glasses.

“I tried to tell ‘em they’re wrong,” he sniffs. “Fuckers won’t listen to me, though. So if they say dumb shit like that, don’t be afraid to tell them to fuck off.”

“I—” Mat’s voice cracks. “I don’t…”

Clutter exhales loudly through his nose before kicking out the chair next to Mat and dropping down into it. There’s a beat. “You like him.”

Mat thinks about denying it. He thinks about snorting, leaning back and trying for an all too casual, _what? Dude, no._

What comes out, though, is a thin, wavering, “Please don’t...I don’t want him to know.”

Clutter’s eyes search Mat’s face for something, and when he finds whatever he’s looking for he reaches for the vodka still sitting under the table from mixing the Jell-O shots earlier, spins the cap off with one swipe of his hand and holds it out to Mat, who takes a pull and winces through the burn.

-

“Shit,” Beau says, coming in through the side door, hair curled by surf and sun. “Should’ve warned you about Clutter—my hands turned fucking gray from dicing black olives Memorial Day weekend.”

Mat tries on a smile that cuts false against his teeth. Everyone knows, he thinks, everyone knows how I feel about you. Everyone thinks we’re dating. Everyone knows.

“Hey,” Beaus tone shifts suddenly. “You okay?”

Mat nods, probably too vigorously. “Yeah, yeah—Clutter fucking woke me up at 7am to make Jell-O shots, but like, other than that.” 

Beau snorts. “Guy thinks he’s Gordon Ramsay or some shit.”

“Fuck you,” Clutter say, carrying two huge bags of ice through the sidedoor and opening the freezer door with his foot. “I’m Ina goddamn Garten and don’t you fucking forget it.” 

_Who?_ Beau mouths at Mat, and Mat shrugs. Blue eyes scale down Mat’s face, his torso, zeroing in on the flash of white bandage wrapped around his middle finger. Mat blinks and Beau’s caught a hold of his wrist, yanking his hand up to eye level. He’s not sure Beau’s truly capable of a real scowl, but his face creases in a deep frown that is trying its hardest. “What the fuck happened?”

“He cut himself.” Clutter hipchecks the freezer shut. “What do you think happened?”

“This is what happens when you fucking rope people into this shit,” Beau snaps.

“Hey, no, it was my fault,” Mat says, trying to tug his hand free. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Look, it was either him or Ebs, and no one in their right mind trusts Ebs with a knife.”

Clutter startles when Mat and Beau share a look that makes them both bust out laughing, but he eventually shrugs and leaves them be, falling red faced into one another.

-

The backyard is filled to the brim, overflowing onto the front lawn and into the house, people Mat’s never met and will probably never see again wrapped up in each other, sunburnt and smiling behind red solo cups. The backyard is decorated with cheap plastic fare in America’s colors, and strands of bulb lights glowing prettily like faux stars against the black backdrop of the light polluted LA sky. Clutter keeps sliding out more and more trays of food that keep getting demolished, and Mat thinks he’s getting better at reading the guy because he’s sure he sees a quiet glow of pride coming off Clutter’s usually stoic frame.

He’s lost Beau somewhere to the seemingly endless amount of people who want Beau’s attention, because people always want Beau’s attention. It’s like when they were kids, everyone caught in Beau’s orbit, surrounding his locker, his desk, spinning with a million and one inside jokes in rapidfire French that left Mat somewhere out in the fringes of starless deep space. There are other people he can talk to, other people he can meet, but there’s a weight in his chest, this burning cocktail of sudden homesickness, displacement, and jittery nerves that makes him dribble punch on himself twice. It’s so warm and beautiful out, the fireworks are going to start soon, surrounded by warm and bright people, and Mat just feels like a blackhole of otherness.

“Barzyyyyy.”

There’s a body crashing into him, an arm hooking around his neck, the smell of the fruity spiked punch close enough to taste. Mat steadies a hand against Beau’s chest and smiles at the solid weight of Beau around him, anchoring him, finally.

“Barzy,” Beau says again. “Barz—dance with me?”

“Uh,” Mat half-laughs. “What? Dude, no. Literally no one else is dancing.”

Beau’s face scrunches. “So?”

Marty’s voice booms from the deck. “Who the fuck gave Casey the AUX cord?”

“Suck it, Martin!” Casey shouts back, the steady stream of top 40 cutting off mid electronic beat, a deeply familiar guitar twining through the air, hit by drums that make Mat’s brow crease because he knows this song. He definitely knows it, has heard it in supermarkets and diners and the old boombox in the garage when his dad is doing yard work.

Beau’s already moving, swaying on the spot with a bobbing head. Mat steps back, trying to let the crowd at the edge of the yard subsume him, but Beau’s looking at him and only him as he starts mouthing the words. He motions for Mat to join him with an excited hand flapping, and Mat shakes his head, feeling more and more people turning to look at them. He blushes, ducking slightly as Beau starts jumping.

“You may be right!” Beau sings, as unselfconscious as the sun. “I may be crazy!”

He grabs Mat’s wrist and tugs him forward. Mat lets himself be pulled, thrill zapping through him at being caught in Beau’s whirlwind.

“But it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for,” Beau croons, big and cheesy, hair curling against his forehead and shirt undone nearly to his stomach. He twists Mat’s arm over his head, spinning him out before pulling him back in, hands carefully cupped while the other slips around to Mat’s lower back, bringing him close. Beau dips them to one side, then back again, world spinning, and Mat’s cheeks ache from a severe smile and permanent blush. He moves stiffly, Tinman joints refusing to give much, laughing at himself more than dancing.

His back bumps into someone, and he spins to make a sorry face when he realizes its Casey, shimmying like a madman with his girlfriend headbanging right next to him. More people are coming over, shoulders and hips rolling to the music, and he thinks it’s Johnny who falls into the pool at some point, but after a while Mat can’t see anyone around them.

-

“C’mon.”

Beau tugs him up the creaky wooden steps—Mat’s only gone upstairs once to grab sunblock from the second floor bathroom, the narrow hallway dark as he’s led down to the last door. Ebs’ bedroom.

“Dude,” Mat whispers, “no, c’mon, what if there’s a dead body in here? I am way, way too drunk to handle that right now.”

Beau giggles, pushing open the door. Another small room painted the same light blue as the rest of the house, piles of clothed kicked into corners, an unmade bed. 

“Is that a fucking Nickelback poster?” Mat squints through the dark. “God, please tell me that’s supposed to be ironic.”

Beau winces over his shoulder. “You honestly think Ebs knows what irony is?”

“No, but—” Mat cuts himself off, dragging both hands down his face. “This is so much fucking worse than a dead body.”

Beau yanks open the window all the way, sliding one leg over and out. Straddling the ledge, with the distant city lights beyond his halo’d silhouette, Beau says, “Come on—the fireworks are starting!”

Beau holds out his hand, and there’s no other choice in the entirety of the universe but to take it. Mat ducks his head, swinging his legs over where the dangle for a horrifying split second before hitting the slanted garage roof. Warm wind glides between them, pushing Mat’s hair out of his sweaty face. His foot slips, arms windmilling until his butt hits the shingles, Beau laughing at him.

“This is so fucking unsafe,” Mat says, lying his back flush with the roof next to Beau. “If I die tonight you’re gonna have to be the one to tell my parents their son died a drunk dumbass.”

“Wow, meeting your parents.” Beau blows out a noisy breath. “It's kind of soon but, okay. I’m ready.”

Mat backhands Beau’s belly, and watches as a streak of blue highlights the side of Beau’s laughing face, a firework bursting over the beach, crackling into fizzing white that makes both of them turn to look up. For a few moments, the world feels big, and not in the cavernous, paralyzing way it usually does, but in a way that bursts at the seams, overflowing with light and sound like it did back when he was a kid and the hold of someone else’s hand could be enough to anchor him. 

A hand like Beau’s, gently lacing their fingers together as they watch the fireworks overhead. Some go off in the shape of stars, a huge white one making the partygoers below _ooooh,_ so loud Mat can’t even hear his own thoughts.

-

He’s not sure how long they stay up there. Long enough that he might actually be starting to fall asleep, listening to the roar of the party die down, and someone must’ve wrangled the AUX away from Casey because the music is low and easy. Mat thinks he might melt into the roof when he sees Beau sit up out of the corner of his eye, half of his friend disappearing into the dark window before sliding back out, two sparklers in hand.

“Almost forgot I saved these,” Beau admits, sliding a lighter out from his back pocket. “Here.”

Mat takes one, the wiggle of _this is probably not a smart thing to do on a roof_ nagging at the back of his mind, but when Beau lights his own and touches it to Mat’s, flickering glow lighting up Beau’s smiling face, all of Mat’s thoughts dissipate along with all the breath in his chest.

“If you two burn my house down,” Marty shouts from the pool, hand cupped around his mouth. “I’ll fucking launch you both into the goddamn sun!”

Beau loops his sparkler through the air, spelling something too quick for Mat to make out. Then he draws, unmistakably, a penis, and Mat ugly laughs.

Just as the sparklers start to die, he feels Beau looking at him, and when Mat looks back Beau says, “I’m really happy you stayed.”

There’s a distant whistle, one last firework goes off overhead in time with the one going off inside Mat’s chest. “Me, too.”

-

The party ends, Ubers and Lyfts seemingly lining the block as people climb in or find a patio chair to huddle up on. Mat and Beau come down from the roof the same way they went up, Hallsy passed out on Ebs’ bed, snoring loudly and sunburnt to absolute hell along his back and shoulders.

Beau immediately jumps to help clean up once they’re outside, grabbing the big black trash bag from Sydney, talking animatedly at her as she gathers blonde hair back from her face into a ponytail. His shoulders move under his shirt, material straining against the pull of his biceps, mouth wide and laughing.

A hand waves in front of his face, and Mat startles. Clutter gives him a look, then hands over a small plate with a fat slice of the chocolate coconut rum cake he’d been slaving over that afternoon. Mat picks up a piece with his fingers and shoves it into his mouth, moaning around the bite.

-

Going to work the next day sucks absolute ballsack, but Ebs and Brock are just as miserable if not more so than he is, wincing and grunting every which way. The beach is blindingly bright and flooded with people. Very loud people. Mat literally wants nothing more than to bury himself in the sand and never come out again.

On his fifteen he sits out back by the garbage scrolling through Instagram when his heart skips a beat. Sydney’s posted a picture from last night, a snapshot of Mat and Beau dancing, flushed and shiny with sweat, arms outstretched and joined by cupped hands, the background of string lights and red cups blurred. Mat’s got his face scrunched, mouth impossibly wide and eyes jammed shut in a chest deep laugh while Beau is caught mid-lyric, mouth pursed in an _ooooh._

Mat’s heart thunders inside of him. The caption underneath reads, _you may be right, they may be crazy_ with a wacky face emoji. He taps the photo once, and sure enough he’s been tagged. He goes to see who’s liked it—people he doesn’t know, spam accounts, Marty, his sister, Fabbs, and Beau. Beau’s account is a conglomerate of over-filtered, blurry pictures and the occasional reposted meme, and he doesn’t post often, so it’s not that hard to scroll back and find what he’s looking for.

It’s an awful up-angled shot of two runny nosed, frost bitten fourteen year olds walking home from school in an onslaught of snow that clung to every bit of their clothes, wincing against the wind. Beau’s only in the corner of the picture, flash uplighting his face in the worst way, right up his nose, while Mat’s just beyond him, mid-word making an awful face, badly broken out around his mouth. Mat can’t really remember why Beau had decided to take a picture, but once in a while….he’ll scroll through Beau’s account and look for it. It was before he ever had an instagram, so he’s not tagged. He never even liked it.

He feels someone walk up, looming over him

“‘Sup?”

He lifts his head, Hallsy standing above him in oversized sunglasses, a long sleeved shirt, sweats and a huge straw hat, white smudges of sunblock across his nose and cheeks. 

“Hey,” Mat says. “Ebs’ll be done in like 10.”

Hallsy nods, then cranes his neck, jerking his chin. “What’s that?”

“Oh, uh.” Mat almost instinctively pockets his phone and says nothing, but Hallsy can clearly see it. “Old picture of me and Beau.”

Hallsy leans in, lowering the sunglasses, then says, “Jesus, did you scroll all the way back to four years ago?”

Mat scowls, and is about to lower his arm when Hallsy reaches out and doubletaps the screen like _a fucking monster._ Mat jerks the phone around and stares down at the bright little red heart in the corner. “Dude, what the fuck?”

Hallsy shrugs, slipping his shades back on. “That’s what you get for calling me a monkfish.”

-

Mat spends the rest of his shift walking a tightrope between full on panic and polite customer service, sweating over the grill and shoveling fries into flimsy striped cartons. It’s too late now to unlike it—even if Beau doesn’t get notifications sent to his phone, there’s still a good chance he’s opened the app at some point. Between the _what can I get for you_’s and the _have a nice day_’s he conjures up excuses that get more and more convoluted. He doesn’t think Beau’s going to believe the old _seagull stole my phone_ story, so all Mat can do is quietly suffer and stress eat pickle slices.

He’s mid-walk home when there’s a buzz from his pocket, and fuck him, it’s Instagram. Beau’s tagged him, and Mat freezes in the middle of the sidewalk.

It’s the picture from four years ago, posted today alongside Sydney’s picture from last night. The caption simply says, _the #gloup is real._ Mat swallows. It was just posted, literally a minute ago, and no one else has liked it yet. He should wait at least until he gets home.

He doubletaps the screen anyway, and slides his phone back into his pocket.

-

The usual crew is at the beach later that night, lowkey with beach chairs propped up in a wonky circle around the bonfire. Mat’s stuffing himself full of s’mores, ignoring the super judgmental looks Beau is shooting, face folded in clear disgust as Mat sucks the sticky marshmallow and chocolate off his fingers. Whatever.

“How old are you here?” Sydney asks, flashing the old picture at Mat. “You’re like babies.”

“Fourteen, almost fifteen?” he hazards, and she makes a face like suddenly pubescent boys who used to watch nothing but Family Guy and piss in bottles on long car rides are just so adorable. “I stayed with his family in a student exchange. I wasn’t allowed to speak English.”

She raises her eyebrows, impressed. “Matt took French for like, fours years and doesn’t know jackshit.”

“That’s not true!” Marty shouts from the cooler. “I can ask to go to the bathroom in perfect Française.”

Sydney ignores her boyfriend, leaning in closer to Mat. “Can you still speak it?”

Mat’s jaw drops. “Uh.”

“Just—anything.”

He clears his throat, tongue awkwardly trying to lift the heavy consonants rolling into one another as he manages, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Beau chimes in, his words so clear and crisp, unhurried and unstilted by the constraints he usually pushes against in English. “Tell her about the weather, but make it really sultry to piss Marty off.”

Mat risks a glance at Marty, who’s settled back next to a rapt Sydney, smiling and delighted to hear them talk in a language she can’t understand. In stark contrast to her sparkling face, Marty looms behind her with an arm around the back of her chair, taking a pull from his beer and glowering in his sleeveless hoodie and backwards cap.

Mat looks back and Beau. “No! He’ll kill me.”

“It’s okay—Ebs can show him where to hide the body.”

Mat laughs, and he can hear Brock grumble somewhere to his left, “And I thought it was bad when they flirted in a language I could understand.”

Mat shrinks, pretending not to hear—Brock can’t know how weirdly sensitive Mat is about it. Can’t know that Mat’s fucking in love with his best friend and trying so desperately to hide it, or that whenever anyone says something even remotely close to the truth he flinches like he’s about to be hit.

Beau notices, though, his megawatt smile fading.

“That’s so cool,” Sydney gushes. “I’ve always wanted to learn another language. I tried the Duolingo thing, but, y’know, it’s hard.”

“Yeah, it’s—” Mat swallows the lump in his throat. “It’s a lot of time and energy. I don’t think I could do it again.”

“How do you say,” Marty asks as he leans forward to get up. “Will you marry me?”

Sydney whips her head around, blonde hair slicing through the air. Marty’s kneeling, tiny velvet box popped open with a ring glistening inside. She does that thing Mat sees in all those viral proposal videos, clasping both hands over her mouth, eyes bright and wet—all before she surges forward and tackles him into the sand, screaming, _yes!_ over and over, the beach carrying the sound of her happiness in an echo across the water.

There’s cheering and drinking and well wishing, Marty and Syd’s smiles never faltering. She shows her friends the ring, and there’s lots of cooing and picture taking, kissing Mat tries to not stare at with obvious jealousy. He sees how they fit together, sees how she lets herself be wrapped up by him, how she casually brings his hand to her lips to kiss his knuckles, like it’s so easy. He can just put his hands on her waist, and she can rest her head on his shoulder, swaying softly to the sound of nothing but fire and waves and their friends laughing. Mat’s eyes burn.

It’s not that he’s never had something like that—he dated girls in high school, one long enough to bring her to Thanksgiving two years ago. Sweet, awkward, clunky romances, fumbling around in cars, dark movie theaters. Even then, though, he’d felt himself always holding something back, something that kept him from reaching out, from holding on. 

They’re the first ones to leave, Marty saluting before hiking Syd up over his shoulder for a laugh, her red face squishing in laughter as she’s carried off. Ebs rolls his eyes. “Cool, guess I’m not going home unless I want to be like, permanently scarred.”

“Like you weren’t gonna go run to Hallsy’s and rub aloe on his shoulders anyway,” Brock snarks.

“Dude, he can’t reach!”

-

They all start to drop off one by one after that, until finally Anders slips a few chairs under his arms and asks, “You guys gonna stay?”

“Yeah,” Beau answers. “We’ll put everything out and clean up.”

A nod, a goodbye, and just like that they’re alone, fire dying down between them as Beau throws on the last few logs.

“That was crazy,” Beau says. “He couldn’t have planned it better.”

Mat hums, picking at the frayed threads at the hem of his shorts, until a hole starts to unravel.

“I mean, they’ve been together for years. I always figured...” Beau trails off. “I guess she’s gonna move in.”

Mat thinks about seeing it everyday, the two of them so happy and in love, and he winces as his stomach twists. He’s an awful fucking person.

“Or maybe they’ll get a new place,” Beau says, then slides his hands up under his hat, fingers gripping at his hair. “Fuck—he’ll have to sell the house then. Shit.”

“Hey,” Mat says, gently putting a hand at Beau’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“You’re not gonna be here,” Beau accuses, jerking away from Mat’s touch. “You don’t care—I do. This is my life.”

Mat glares. “Of course I fucking care. I’d care even if I was leaving _tomorrow_, but Marty’s not getting married for at least another year. Or even if they elope or whatever, he wouldn’t just kick you out with no place to go.”

Beau turns his face away, eyes slipping shut. “Shit, I know, I’m sorry, I just—it sucks, that it can’t be like this forever. All of us hanging out, you being here…” He pauses, opening his eyes to expose the pinch of panic around them. “You’re not leaving tomorrow,” Beau asks, “Right?”

Mat shakes his head.

“When are you leaving?”

He swallows. “I haven’t bought a ticket yet.”

“Eventually, though.”

Mat nods. “Eventually.”

The fire crackles, and Beau looks down, smile small. “I was so pissed when you left without saying goodbye.”

It takes Mat a second to realize he’s talking about the morning he left Montreal.

“I woke up and like, just knew,” Beau tells him. “I thought you’d wake me up, but then I heard the car door slam and just...ran downstairs.”

Mat sees it so perfectly in his mind, Beau in his pajamas, his unlaced boots, his mom’s jacket.

“I thought,” Mat swallows, “it was better that way. Like it wouldn’t suck so much, y’know?”

Beau lets out a tiny, jagged laugh. “I thought it was ‘cause you knew.”

Mat frowns. “Knew what?”

Beau looks at him. Really looks at him. They’ve pivoted their chairs towards each other, slowly inching closer throughout the night, straining to hear each other over the music, their friends, but now in the quiet it feels like there’s almost nothing between them.

“That I had the biggest fucking crush on you,” Beau tells him, lips trying to lift into a smile. A flicker of memory behind his wedged eyes pins itself into the corners of Beau’s mouth, like a butterfly behind glass. He shakes his head, looking down at his hands. “God, you had to know—I was so obvious about it.”

Mat stares. And stares, and stares, and stares.

“And like, I was so emo after you left. Like Linkin Park all hours of the day emo,” Beau’s trying for a lighter tone, like he didn’t just drop a nuke into their conversation. “My parents had to sit me down and ask me if I wanted to talk to someone about it, which turned into like, me telling them I even liked guys—which was actually...it was hard, but it was good, you know? I think I would’ve been miserable a lot longer if I couldn’t talk about it with them. But I was so young, y’know? We were both so fucking young.”

Mat remembers the incredible depth of his own sadness back then, how no one had really noticed. Probably because he was just good at stuffing it down, doing what he needed to do, pretending he was fine until eventually it faded into something manageable, so swiftly and so simply his parents never said a thing. They’re good people, his parents, and he’s pretty sure his mom knows—but they just...don’t talk about things like that. 

But Beau...expressive, loud, uninhibited Beau, who has never been good at hiding things. It’s hard, he realizes, to read someone who seems so open, so unflinchingly themselves. Like trying to stand up when the waves just keep coming, caught in a riptide of pure sincerity.

“I,” Mat swallows, “I had no idea.”

“What?” Beau’s face scrunches. “Yes you did—I was all over you all the time.”

“You’re just like that,” Mat says, a pitch shy of hysterical. “You’re like that now.”

Beau opens his mouth, about to say something, but nothing comes out except a small, barely audible half-sound. Silence claws its way between them, Beau’s face quieting into something almost shy as he looks down at the frayed ends of his hoodie strings, fiddling with them. Mat bulges, “You—_seriously?”_

Beau actually looks kind of pissed, hands flying as he stares Mat down, unblinkingly furious. “Mat, I _begged_ you to stay. I held your hand on the garage for like, an hour. I thought we were both just like, politely ignoring how stupidly gone I am over you. And I know it’s stupid. I fucking know, okay? But you look at me sometimes, a-and I can’t fucking help myself even though I know you’re leaving, and—”

Mat’s pulse is screaming through every part of his body. He can’t hear the ocean anymore, or the fire, or the drunk girls whoo-ing around their own bonfire somewhere down the beach. He barely hears himself get out, half-choked and carrying the weight of every other word that gets caught in his tight throat, _“Beau.”_

Beau’s stops, half his face lit by the fire, the other half by a blue tinted moonlight. Mat pushes forward, cupping Beau’s jaw as he presses their mouths together, soft, barely there. And again, because he can’t help it, and then again because he still can’t. He finally pulls back just enough, noses bumping a little as his thumb strokes back and forth over Beau’s cheek, eyes opening to meet impossibly bright blue ones.

Mat feels a hand wrapping around the back of his neck, fingers in the short hair at the nape as Beau surges forward, kissing Mat, the arms of their chairs clicking between them as a slow tongue traces over Mat’s bottom lip. A tiny sound, embarrassingly close to a whimper, escapes him. His hands slide up and knock the hat clear off of Beau’s head, threading into his hair, tugging.

They pull apart with a pop, and Beau’s fingers tighten where they’ve fallen to grip the collar of Mat’s shirt. He lets out a soft laugh. “Is this really happening?”

The corner of Mat’s mouth twitches. He knows the feeling, like he’s going to wake up any second, still somehow in Vancouver. He nods, foreheads brushing, and kisses Beau again, and again, and again. As many times as he wants.

-

The fire eventually dies too much for them to stay, and Mat collects bottles and cups and chairs while Beau runs down to the water with a bucket. The hiss of steam blooms between them, warmth eked out by cool moonlight, smell of smoke clinging to their clothes as they make their way up towards the street. It’s a quiet walk home, but every time Mat looks up, Beau is looking back, smiling. The rush of release has him feeling giddy, and he keeps knocking the folded chair into lampposts and fire hydrants and one lady walking her tiny dog.

They get back to the house and rest the chairs against the fence, walking up the porch steps, the house beyond the windows dark and quiet. Mat doesn’t want to go inside—like this all might dissipate the second he’s through that door. Like the reality of walls and a roof, their shared bedroom will remind them of all the things they aren’t thinking about. 

“Hey,” Beau says, and Mat turns. Beau fists a hand into the front of Mat’s shirt, tugging forward, and Mat follows, letting himself fall into another kiss under the porch light. Beau pulls back. “I gotta shower.”

Mat lifts an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“I gotta shower, and then we gotta, you know, talk,” Beau says, and at the word talk Mat must visibly flinch because Beau hits him with the softest smile. “A good talk.”

“A good talk,” Mat echoes. 

“A good talk,” Beau affirms, leaning in close with his gaze fixed on Mat’s lips. “And good other stuff, too.”

Mat nods, then realizes they can’t kiss with his head bobbing up and down like that, and steadies himself, pressing Beau up against the porch railing’s support beam and kissing him, hands on Beau’s hips, tongue in Beau’s mouth, Beau’s arms around his shoulders. He can’t remember the last time he’s kissed someone like this. He doesn’t think he’s ever kissed someone like Beau.

“Barz,” Beau tries to say. _“Mat.”_

“Mm.”

“I worked all day, I surfed, ran around getting stuff for the party. I reek,” Beau laughs. “I have to shower.”

Beau does smell—like sweat and ocean and sunblock, and Mat blushes, because all he wants to do is bury his face into the crook of Beau’s neck and breathe long and deep. He steps away, letting Beau go, keys rattling around as he unlocks the door, and Beau casts one last look over his shoulder, smiling before heading into the dark house. Mat’s eyes roll skyward, inhaling deeply and holding it as he heads inside.

-

Mat keeps checking his phone for the time, minutes crawling by, but he can still hear the water rushing through the pipes above head. He cycles through the same four apps, almost buys a new set of cutting boards on Amazon, googles the news because like, he should probably have some idea about what’s going on in the world?

When he hears Beau’s footsteps padding down the stairs, he bolts up, and thinks (too late) that maybe he should look a little more casual than sitting up on his bed staring at the door like a dog. Beau pushes into the room, towel draped around his neck, looking so soft in sweats and a t-shirt. There’s a perfumed wave of soapy bodywash wafting in, and Beau shuts the door behind him gently before ducking and crawling onto Mat’s bed.

“I think Marty went to Syd’s place,” he says, like he’s not in Mat’s bed, skin pink from a hot shower. “And who the fuck knows where Ebs went.”

“Probably to where he buries his victims,” Mat says, automatic, like it can be that easy, that normal.

“Or to Taylor’s,” Beau says, then winces, “which might be the same place?”

“Oh shit,” Mat gasps. “They’re a team—it’s how they’ve evaded the police for so long.”

Beau giggles, tossing the towel up onto the desk chair. 

A beat, then Mat says, “What do you want to talk about?”

Beau shrugs, sitting cross legged. “Dunno. All the stuff we haven’t talked about?”

“That’s a lot of stuff,” Mat says, rubbing his jaw. 

“Yeah.” Beau bites at his lower lip. “I think maybe, if we just ask each other what we want to know...bear with me I know this sounds crazy…we can get answers.”

Mat nods, pursing his lips. “Sounds just crazy enough to work.”

“Exactly, so,” Beau sits up. “Who starts?”

“I think you technically just did.”

“See? We’re already great at this.” Beau claps his hands. “Okay, your turn.”

“Uh,” he tries. “I guess...did you really like me back when we first met?”

“Yes,” Beau says on the end of a laugh. “I already told you—huge fucking embarrassing monster crush on an idiot who told my mom he was horny for her dinner.”

Mat groans, “Shut up, I was trying to say I was excited for dinner, and you know that!”

Beau’s smile flickers, and he asks, “Did you like me? Back then, I mean.”

Mat mind reels through so many moments, images, first meeting Beau, the way they clicked, how patient he was when Mat was really trying to work through how to say something. The way he’d secretly let Mat speak English when it was just them, late at night with school early the next morning.

“I remember just...wanting to be around you, wanting you to think I was funny or cool or whatever, but...I don’t know. I didn’t think about it like that. I don’t think I knew how to think about it like that,” Mat admits. “I don’t think I was ready.”

Beau nods, looking down at his lap. “Yeah, I figured.”

Mat pauses, then, “When did you know you liked me now?”

“Oh, god,” Beau rubs hands over his face. “At first it was like—maybe it’s leftover, from when we were kids, you know? But then we kept hanging out, and you kept making me laugh. You’re so—” Beau cuts himself off, shaking his head. “I just looked at you one night and you had cheeto dust all over your face, and I was like...oh fuck.”

Mat’s chest tightens. “Before you asked me to stay?”

“You can’t ask two questions in a row,” Beau says, archly, but then, “Yeah. Yeah, like, way before.” He swallows. “What about you?”

Mat thinks back. God, it feels so long ago. “When you took me to your spot to surf...the way you moved, I—fuck.” His skin prickles his heat, but Beau’s pink, too. “I knew I was in trouble.”

“Yeah?” Beau grins, scooting closer. “How’d I move?”

“You can’t ask two questions in a row.” He pokes Beau in the side, watching him squirm. He lets the moment settle, then says, “Like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

Beau’s pink face deepens into a red.

Mat swallows. “Are we...what are we?”

“I don’t know,” Beau says, soft, honest. “I just like you. I just want you.”

“Me, too,” Mat’s voice is barely above a whisper. “Fuck, me too. I like you so much.”

Beau’s eyes scan his face, creased between his eyebrows. “What do we do when you leave?”

“I don’t know,” Mat shakes his head. “I have to go back, at some point. My parents...I have to talk to them. And then I start school. I probably need to leave at the end of July, first week of August, maybe.”

Beau nods. If this were a movie, maybe Mat would secretly not want to go to school. Maybe it would be a really easy decision to stay, to forget his family, his home, realize he was on an express track to a life he never really wanted. Maybe he’d know, deep down, that now all he truly wants is Beau, forever and always—to hell with everything else.

But that’s not true. Mat wants a lot of things. He wants to hang out with his sister, he wants to tell his parents how he feels, he wants to go to school, he wants to be an architect, wants to travel, wants to live. He doesn’t want to waste the scholarship he worked so fucking hard for, doesn’t want to lose the dream that at times felt like the only thing that kept him going. He’s so young, he knows. He and Beau are so young, and long distance doesn’t work, and what if this is all just some illusion of this safe warm bubble of coastline and sunshine?

He looks at Beau, and it’s like all that just...falls away.

“Whatever happens, we can still...right now, we can still try right now.” Mat takes Beau’s hand, thumbing over the knuckles. He looks up. “Can’t we?”

It’s hard, after that, to keep talking about it when neither of them has an answer. So they talk about other things, lying facing one another on Mat’s bed, voices low, trading kisses between words.

“Your turn.”

Beau hums sleepily into Mat’s chest, their legs intertwined. Outside, the sun is starting to come up. “Tell me about the house again.”

Mat scrunches his face at the ceiling. “What house?”

“The one you planned,” Beau yawns, breath hot on Mat’s neck. “When you were a kid. With the ball pit.”

It zings through Mat, lighting him up like a skyscraper floor by floor, and for some stupid reason his throat gets tight and his eyes burn. He slips them shut, and starts, “There’d be one of those bookcases, y’know? One that like, opens into a secret room when you pull out a specific book...”

-

Mat books his flight home for August 1st, and even though it lands heavy in his chest when the email confirmation pops up on his phone, at least now there’s a solid date to be sad about rather than the looming, nebulous eventuality of having to leave. He calls to tell his mom, and he thinks she might be crying by the way she sniffles and says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll pick you up—send me all your flight info.”

In the meantime he keeps working, he keeps surfing, and he and Beau keep kissing.

They’re not sure if they should tell the guys. It’s not like it’s something that’s easily explainable, and there’s something kind of nice about having this thing all to themselves. The way he’ll be in the kitchen grabbing OJ from the fridge and Beau will reach out and tug on the hem of his t-shirt. Gently kicking each other under the table when they’re all out to eat. Not so gently kicking each other under the table when they’re all out to eat. 

Clutter, he thinks, somehow knows. The first night out at the bar after the bonfire, they make eye contact across the room, and Clutter lifts an eyebrow before sending a free round of shots his and Beau’s way. It may have something to do with the dumb, dreamy expression he has on his face—the one he catches in his front camera by accident, in the corners of mirrors, sighing and smiling at nothing.

He’s in the middle of one of these mooning sessions over a soggy bowl of cereal when Marty comes in with the stack of mail and squints at Mat. “Just had an interesting conversation with Garth.”

Mat raises an eyebrow. “Does he think he can hear radio transmissions from the Russian government in his fillings again?”

“Not exactly,” Marty slaps the mail down on the table. “He says he saw two of the Backstreet Boys necking on my front porch, and that it was scaring his cats.”

Mat for the briefest, most fleeting moment, opens his mouth to deny it, but he can feel a deep burn setting into his cheeks, and he knows it’s given him away. He stammers, “Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Marty says. “Just know when you’re making out on the front porch, Garth and his hairless cats are watching you.”

Mat makes a face, pushing his bowl away, suddenly not hungry.

-

They’re making out on Beau’s bed, Beau settled between Mat’s thighs with his legs hooked over Mat’s hips, slept in boxers and t-shirts the only things separating them. There had been early morning surfing, followed by mid afternoon naps, Mat dragging the blankets from his own bed over to Beau’s to cocoon themselves together in a slant of sunlight beaming in through the small basement window. He’d woken up, drowsy with warmth, to Beau nuzzling at the spot right under his ear, murmuring, “Gotta get up.”

Beau had been trying to sneak a shower in before dinner, but Mat had caught him by the wrist and pulled him down, licking the taste of saltwater off the long line of Beau’s neck.

“C’mon, dude,” Beau breathes as Mat kisses behind the hinge of his jaw. “Everyone’s coming over. I have to try to be like, a little less gross.”

Mat hums, and when Beau makes a move like he’s about the get up, Mat sweeps Beau under him, flush to the mattress. Beau’s hands are in his hair, threading through and tugging softly, and Mat sighs. It’s a deep, unhurried kiss, cutting all the strings of tension one by one. Mat pulls up, Beau sprawled beneath him against the sheets with glassy eyes and a swollen mouth. The pendant of his necklace flipped up against his throat, gleaming. God, Mat wants to lick it.

His hands slip under Beau’s shirt, rucking it up over the warm expanse of skin, then down around to the dip of his lower back. There’s a soft moan against his mouth, and something comes untethered. He wants, in an ache that reaches bone deep, throbbing—he wants anything Beau will give him. When he rocks his hips down, he can feel how much Beau wants him, too.

Hands grip his ass through his sweats, and Mat almost smiles into another long, deep kiss, Beau rolling up to meet Mat’s thrusts, unhurried and so, so good. He mouths along Beau’s stubbly jaw and listens to small sounds spilling from his full, well bitten lips as he rocks down harder, circling slow.

“Oh god,” Beau gasps, low and raspy, and Mat catches a groan between his teeth, grinding forward. “Fuck me.”

Mat looks down at him, panting. “Yeah? Like this?”

Beau’s eyes are glazed, everything about him oozing want from his debauched hair to his teeth catching at his bottom lip, legs tightening around Mat’s waist. “Just like this, fuck, yes, _just_ like this.”

Mat catches Beau mouth with his own, pulling off in a dirty sounding pop and moving them through it, gripping one of the bed posts for leverage. They move like there aren’t clothes keeping them apart, the friction sparking between them hot enough to catch fire and burn every last thread away. Waistbands get tugged down just enough, slick, hot, bare against each other.

Beau shakes apart beneath him, gasp fluttering into a moan Mat knows haunt him for the rest of his life, the look on his face so pink and so broken open. His hips stutter, coming undone at the seams as Beau kisses at his throat, whispering in French, “That’s it, so fucking hot.”

His arms tremble, and he falls forward, Beau catching him with hands carding through the back if Mat’s hair, lips pressing to his temple. He knows he has to move. He knows they’ve got maybe ten minutes tops before someone busts into their room looking for them. He knows Clutter is upstairs making dinner, smells the tang of tomato coming from above.

“Barzy,” Beau half-laughs.

“Mm,” Mat grunts, but finds it in himself to roll over onto his back, tucking himself back into his ruined boxers briefs.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Beau smacks his chest, and Mat feels the bed dip as Beau swings up and off. “Seriously.”

“Mm.”

“Barz.”

“Okay,” Mat whines, forcing himself to sit up. When he blinks his eyes open, Beau is right there swooping in for one last kiss. Mat’s hand twitches, reflexively, grabbing uselessly at the front of Beau’s shirt like it wants to keep him there. He lets go when Beau pulls back, all rumpled from rolling around in bed for so long, all pink from kissing and touching. The sight makes Mat feel every inch the eighteen that he is, soft and unhinged and too much and not enough all at once.

Beau snorts, fingers threading through Mat’s hair. “Try to look halfway decent, yeah?”

Mat clears his throat. “Even my quarter-way decent is too much for most people to handle.”

A sharp tug to the back of his hair, sending a ripple of goosebumps down Mat’s back, his arms, and Beau just says, “You’re such a dork.”

-

“We gotta do something big,” Marty says, tapping a pen against his chin. “Something monumental. Something with pizzazz, and maybe an 80s cover band. Send out invites—we’ll call it _Barz Voyage.”_

Sydney sighs, leaning her cheek against her fist. “I wish you’d put half as much energy into planning our wedding as you did planning Barzy’s going away party.”

Mat doesn’t really want a party—at least, not anything other than a night at the bar or in the backyard with the guys, drinking too much and eating whatever, no one acknowledging his time ticking away. Whatever Marty’s planning seems way too involved, but Mat doesn’t really have the heart to say no.

“Babe, we’ll have tons of other weddings,” Marty tells her, “Barz is only gonna leave once.”

Her eyes flash dark, dull, shark-like. “We’ll have tons of other weddings?”

Mat cans see the gears churning in Marty’s head before he whips his gaze up. “I meant when we renew our vows—”

“You know what?” She smiles tightly, standing. “We’ll see if you even make it to the first one.”

The look on Marty’s face is that of a man who knows he has deeply and irreparably fucked up, his fiance swishing out of the room in a flash of gold hair and perfume. Mat watches her go, hears the door open and slam hard enough to knock something off the wall. He winces. “Shouldn’t you go after her?”

“It’s fine,” Marty says, but he doesn’t sound like he even believes it himself. “You gotta pick your big dramatic run-afters very carefully, Barz. That’s my little tip, from me to you.”

Mat squints. “I’m not sure if I should be taking advice from a guy whose fiance just stormed out of the room in a blind rage.”

“Well now I’m not sure if we’re gonna hire a magician,” Marty says, animatedly crossing something off of the legal pad in front of him. “So chew on that.”

-

He gets off of a shift at Barry’s and bribes Clutter with the promise to be his designated Jell-O shot pourer if he drives Mat out to Beau’s spot, with a quick slurpee pitstop.

It’s beautiful out when he slides from the passenger’s side of Clutter’s van with a quick salute of thanks, but then again, it’s always beautiful out here. Mat makes his way down to the beach, seating himself in the sand with his knees pulled up to his chest, two slurpees dug into small holes one one side of him.

The sky behind Beau is bleeding pink and orange, sunlight skimming the surface of the water as his dark silhouette glides through, fingers trailing down to touch what look like stars caught in the waves. He flies off the curl of ocean, popping into the air before sliding into a smooth finish, and Mat doesn’t think he’s blinking, doesn’t want to in case he might miss even a second.

Beau catches a bad edge, leaving his board, but instead of flailing or shouting or tucking into himself, Beau’s unspooled body just falls, letting the ocean catch him. Mat leans forward, some abortive move to help when Beau’s head whips through the surface, hair plastered against his forehead, gasping.

He’s coasting to shore when he sees Mat, and Mat can see his face light up even from a distance, Beau too excited to let the water take him, jumping off his board and sloshing through the crush of water around him in big, leaping steps until he’s free. “Hey!” he shouts. “What are you doing here?”

He thinks about saying, _oh Clutter dropped me off on his way._ He thinks about saying, _the boardwalk was too crowded, so..._ He thinks about saying, _you promised me dinner, remember?_

Instead, Mat says, “I just...wanted to see you.”

Beau drops his board in the sand, sinking to his knees in front of Mat, and kisses him, cold water seeping in through Mat’s thin t-shirt and shorts. Droplets clinging to Beau’s eyelashes, his hair, drip down and slide down Mat’s cheeks like tears. He grips the back of Beau’s neck, holding him close, kisses tasting like salt, like summer.

“Let me,” Beau says between kisses, “towel off and change.”

Mat hums, but makes no move to let go. 

A snort of a laugh against his lips, and Beau’s pulling back. “Seriously, you’re getting soaked.”

“Don’t care,” Mat murmurs, chasing a bead of water down Beau’s chin, his throat. There’s a sigh, soft and fluttery, but Beau stands, and Mat lets go.

“Two seconds,” Beau promises, pressing a soft smack to Mat’s forehead before running off to his car, board over his head. Mat watches, jittery energy skittering through him, hands fixing for something to hold, foot shaking, smile nearly painful. He can see the front of Beau's car in the parking lot, watches it wobble with doors opening and slamming shut. Then he’s jogging back onto the sand with a towel around his neck, one balled up under his arm, a t-shirt thrown on. “Stole these from Ebs,” he says, and unfurls the towel. “Look at this.”

A hard laugh forces its way up out of Mat chest. “Holy shit.”

“Look at it,” Beau points to the very clear deep red stain across Spongebob’s face. “Tell me that’s not fucking blood!”

“I can’t,” Mat laughs. “Dude, I can’t.”

“He said it was food coloring. From baking,” Beau’s expression explodes into a pure bewilderment, eyes huge and cheeks puffing with the exclamation of a word that hasn’t formed yet. He touches a hand to his head, before letting it float out in front of him, uncomprehending. “When the fuck has he ever baked, in his entire fucking life?”

“He doesn’t even know how to use the toaster over—yo, fucking get that away from me!”

“It’s all I have—I don’t want to sit in the sand all wet.”

“I’m not fucking sitting on that thing. No way.”

They’re laughing to the point of crying now, towel fisted between them, trying to shove it back to the other, Beau half collapsed on top of him. Mat’s so glad he came. So fucking glad.

-

The sky’s turned this surreal purple, a near neon pink highlighting the horizon, the silhouettes of palm trees down the coast swaying. The ocean is the only thing they can hear, lapping softly at the shore, neither of them talking, neither of them knowing what to say. Their slurpee cups are empty, forced into the sand to keep from blowing away, and Beau’s mouth is stained.

Mat’s on his back in the sand, Beau half curled over him, letting Beau trace the pad of his thumb over the swell of Mat’s lips, the curve of his cupid’s bow, down back again to his chin. His hair has mostly dried into soft, ungelled wisps that move with the breeze, and Mat’s trying so hard to commit every part of this to memory. Trying so hard not to think about how this is all ending, about how he’s not going to wake up with Beau anymore, of fall asleep with his head on Beau’s chest, or fight over the last of the orange juice, or make fun of Ebs, or—

They kiss, soft, sweet, warm breeze winding through them, and Beau tastes electric. He tastes blue.

-

The party isn’t what Marty had planned. There’s no 80s cover band, or magicians, or even name brand soda. In the end, it’s exactly what Mat wanted—everyone together in the backyard, swapping stories, laughing, eating.

“...puke everywhere, Devon’s gone catatonic on the corner, and fucking Ebs,” Anders jabs his finger in Ebs’ direction. “Looks from the floor, to the counter, to Devon, to me and just goes, _I guess we’re not going to Taco Bell.”_

Mat doesn’t know if he’s ever laughed this hard for this long in his entire life. He chokes out, “Does anyone even know that guy’s name?” 

“I ID’d him once when he came in,” Clutter mentions. “It’s like, John or something.”

“Since when the fuck do you ID?” Casey scoffs.

Clutter’s eyes go sharp, lifting his beer to his lips. “When I sense trouble coming.”

Mat makes a face, then looks up at Beau, who’s perched on the arm of Mat’s deck chair. “Was I not trouble? I could’ve been trouble, if I wanted.”

“Of course you could’ve,” Beau coos, pushing Mat’s hair back from his face.

“I could’ve!” Mat insists, looking around the doubtful semicircle of faces. “I could’ve been a total fucking like, rebel without a cause, or whatever. You didn’t know.”

“Yeah, I definitely got that vibe when you knocked into Tito’s drink and then kept apologizing and trying to soothe him with your abs,” Marty snorts. Mat squints, the vague, fuzzy memory of trying to absorb the stain of Beau’s shirt with his own flittering through his mind. He touches a hand to his belly, face heating.

“That wasn’t—” he tries, but everyone is laughing too hard, and he settles for. “Fuck you guys. Sorry you’re all like, so old and all of your muscles have atrophied.”

“I thought Tito was gonna combust.” Casey looks at Beau, giant shit eating grin on his face. “You turned into a tomato.”

Mat doesn’t have any memory of that, but when he looks back up Beau is quietly sipping at his drink, his face turning a shade close to the glossy red of his cup. Mat wants to curl a hand under the back of Beau’s knee and touch the soft skin there, wants to playfully tug Beau into his lap, wants to hold his hand. Everyone’s looking, though, and even if Mat knows they’re all his friends, even if Mat knows they wouldn’t care, he can’t let go of that last thread of doubt, can’t tell where it begins or what it’s tied to. Or maybe he can, but he’s not ready to. Not right now, under the few stars that are shining bright enough to show in the sky. Not now, when it’s his last night here.

“Yeah, but what you guys didn’t see,” Mat goes on, “Is that after that I gave him a noogie in the alleyway and stole his lunch money.”

-

Eventually, everyone starts to say their goodbyes. Sydney kisses his red cheeks, and Leo hands him a small hand knitted bag with a drawstring he says would be “ideal as a case for sunglasses,” which is so weirdly touching Mat almost tears up. He gets a few hand shakes and shoulder pats, a bearhug from Casey that’s only topped by Clutter nearly breaking his spine in half. It ends with Anders telling him in a quiet voice, “We’re gonna really miss you.” Which makes Mat look away with a few wet blinks that go politely ignored.

With only a few people left around the fire in a too-still silence, Marty grunts, popping up onto his feet. “Okay, I’m opening tomorrow, so I gotta get a few hours, at least.” He rolls his shoulders, and looks at Mat. “Barzy, it was an honor and a privilege.”

“Thanks for letting me stay,” Mat says, and it feels like hollow imitations of words he’s heard adults say to other adults, but he means it from the very bottom of his heart. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done without Marty.

“Any time,” Marty gives him a grin, catching Mat’s hand in a tight grip before pulling him into a one-armed hug. “I mean it.”

When the screen door shuts behind him, the quiet settles in again. Mat wishes he could think of something, anything to fill it with, to make it like how it was just the night before, or last week, or last month.

“Bro,” Beau says, and when Mat looks up he’s craning his neck and leaning over to try and peer into Ebs’ cup. “What’s in that?”

Ebs doesn’t even try to tilt the cup away or shield it from Beau’s view. Just takes a long sip and holds it up. “Milk.”

Beau recoils. “Milk and what?”

“Don’t,” Hallsy cuts in, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “Don’t ask questions that you’re not ready to have answered.”

“Dude, shut up,” Ebs snaps. “You didn’t have a banana for the first time in your life until like a year ago.”

Mat cackles, Beau collapsing on top of him.

-

Ebs and Hallsy head off to some party in the valley, and Ebs keeps his goodbye lowkey, like Mat’s not actually leaving, like they’ll work a shift tomorrow at Barry’s, talking shit and eating burnt fries. Hallsy doesn’t even say goodbye at all, just keeps complaining loudly that their _Uber is fucking waiting, Ebs._

Once they're alone, Beau slides down into his lap, and Mat _oofs,_ wincing in pretend pain. “How are you so fucking heavy for someone the same height as like, Bilbo Baggins?”

“It’s the weight of all my love for you, baby,” Beau sings, and Mat maybe short circuits when his brain catches on the word love, but then Beau’s leaning in to kiss him. Mat’s hands come up and knock the hat off of Beau’s head, fingers tangling in the saltwater wrung hair. They trail down to the nape of Beau’s neck, stroking along the curve of his shirt’s collar, softly over and over again like he can commit that one stitch of skin to memory, keep it with him and take it all the way back home. Like it’ll be enough, somehow.

“Or like,” Mat murmurs on a low breath, “ BilBEAU Baggins. Get it?”

Beau’s eyes wedge. “You’re such a _nerd.”_

They part and come back together again like a tide, pushing in and pulling out, lips swelling and the distance between layers of clothes feeling like eons. Beau’s hand cups the side of Mat’s face, keeping him still when he pulls back and looks down into Mat’s eyes with his own shining so brightly that Mat’s sure they’re wet. 

“I’m gonna miss you,” Beau says, soft, almost to himself, “so fucking much.”

It’s the first time either of them has said it, acknowledged what’s happening beyond the shallow statement of neat, simple facts. It’s the quiet admission that it’s over. It guts Mat. Fucking guts him, every word he couldn’t say, every touch he held back knotted as tightly as his fingers are clenched into Beau’s clothes. Mat knows if he lets go, they’ll be trembling.

“I—” he tries, throat so tight it’s almost closed. “I…”

Beau pecks him once, twice on the mouth, a silent _it’s okay,_ before he slides up and off. 

Downstairs, in the darkness of their shared bedroom, they wind together so tightly Mat’s not sure where he ends and Beau begins.

-

Beau's asleep when he calls the Uber and brings all of his stuff outside to the curb, when he puts his keys on the table next to a wad of cash in the amount he’d totaled up in his head for the wifi, the utilities, the summer. He sits on the edge of the mattress, Beau sprawled out in the sheets with watery, pale 6am light just touching the edges of his face, his full mouth, eyelashes casting long shadows over his cheeks. Mat doesn’t have the heart to wake him, or maybe he’s got so much heart. Too much fucking heart, it feels like it’s about to punch out of his chest, and he knows if he wakes Beau, sees ocean eyes looking up at him, he won’t be able to leave.

It’s just easier this way.

-

Home is both exactly and nothing like how he remembers it. Not quite right but not wrong, either. Like someone demolished the entire thing and then rebuilt an exact replica down to the millimeter.

Everything is in the same spot it’s always been, and his sister is still upside down on the couch calling him a weirdo. His mom is still twisting around the kitchen, the family room, fixing and talking a mile a minute about everything under the sun. His dad still can’t figure out how to use the smart TV remote. His bedroom is exactly how he left it, and from the first inhale it floods him with a smell he’s never been able to pinpoint the specifics of, laundry detergent and grass and too-cold air from the AC and— 

He’s what’s not fitting, he realizes. He feels clumsily big, bumping into hanging mirrors and side tables, forcing everything into drawers that are suddenly overstuffed, even though he didn’t buy any new clothes. The sun reaches everything through big and open windows, the floors don’t creek, there’s carpet in most rooms. 

Fabbs nearly kicks his bedroom door down, “Barz, the fuck!”

He gets rugburn on his elbows from Fabbs tackling him, but it feels kind of good, like he’s fitting himself back into his home burn by burn.

-

Beau doesn’t text him, or call him, and Mat guesses he deserves as much. Most nights he stays up in bed tapping out long, paragraph texts, then he deletes them letter by letter, nothing sounding right. Sometimes they go like, _I’m sorry I’m a peice of shit I’m so sorry I don’t know why I did it that way._ But sometimes they’re simpler, _I left like we both knew I always would._

Ebs Facetimes him from Barry’s, and even though it lags, heavily pixelated, it’s like a scene straight out of a dream, so deeply familiar but so hard to hold onto.

Ebs is mad. His mad face isn’t all that different from his regular half-lidded expression, but Mat can tell, the microtwitches between his eyebrows, the corners of his mouth, and the first thing he says it, “Tito’s pissed at you.”

Mat wipes a hand down his face. “I know.”

“Why’d you pull that shit?” Ebs asks. “He said you left without saying goodbye—like he woke up and you were just gone, and you haven’t texted or called or anything.”

“I—yeah,” Mat can’t deny it.

“Barz.”

“I know,” Mat says, feeling every last hackle inside of him go up at the edge on Ebs’ voice. “But he was asleep and like...it was so fucking hard, okay? You don’t know. He made it pretty clear we couldn’t do the distance thing, and we’re both eighteen, so like, we both knew it wasn’t going to work.”

“So,” Ebs says, slow, “you’re too young to what? Call him? Talk to him? At least fucking try?”

That’s not fair. That’s not fucking fair, because Ebs doesn’t know.

“Excuse me if I’m not gonna take relationship advice from the guy who won’t even tell the friend he’s been in love with for fucking years how he feels,” Mat snaps, and the second the last word is out of his mouth he instantly regrets it, wants to reach out and shove them all back in, clamp down hard enough to break his teeth.

Just like he can tell when Ebs is angry, he can tell when Ebs is hurt.

“Cool,” is all Ebs says, word splintering. The world spins, and all that’s on the screen is cloudless blue sky and the edge of the burger stand’s awning. “Alright. Cool. Whatever.”

“Jordan—” he tries, but the call ends, and all Mat can do in press his head against the surface of his kitchen table and try to breathe.

-

“Hey man,” Fabbs reaches over, squeezing Mat’s shoulder in the Fabbros’ obscenely white kitchen. The rest of the guys out on the patio, grilling, drinking, and it’s the first time Mat’s hung out with a big crew since he’s been home. It almost feels kind of like he never left. He’s not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing—it feels nice that his friends didn’t forget him, and that they’re still so tight even after he fucked off for the whole summer, but on the other hand it makes the past few months seem like a dream he’s woken up from, like the weight in his chest shouldn’t be there. Fabbs looks at him. “You’ve been sort of down lately. You know you can always talk to me. Cry into my bosom. Whatever.”

Mat snorts and shoves Fabbs off. “Dude, shut up.”

“What? Come on! I did everything the mental health advice forum said I should do!” Fabbs shouts. “Didn’t you feel all supported and shit?”

“About as supported as your heaving bosom without a bra.”

Fabbs cups his hands over his chest, pivoting away. “Don’t objectify me, Mathew.”

From outside, they hear Chabby scream, but it’s probably not serious.

“Seriously,” Fabbs looks at him. “You’ve seemed like, not yourself since you go back.”

Mat stares, not sure where to take this—they’ve talked about real shit before, but those conversations were always littered with bad jokes and the bravado of melodramatics to make it seem like they weren’t really talking about anything heavy. Fabbs has shed that completely, looking Mat right in the eye, like he’s some well-adjusted human being in touch with his emotions or some shit. It’s the kind of thing someone could so easily let themselves lean into, but Mat can help but shrink back from it on instinct.

“You’ve been watching way too much Queer Eye,” Mat counters with a shallow laugh.

“Yeah, probably.” Fabbs shoots him a lopsided grin. “But still.”

Mat’s breath sticks in his chest. He’s kept it all so tightly wound that even one thread snapping will unspool the whole thing. He’s been trying—god, he’s been trying so hard to keep himself in check, and Fabbs is threatening to undo all of that work with just a single look.

“Is it Tito?” Fabbs asks, and Mat’s struck wordless. “You guys seemed, I don’t know—close, or whatever. Like, every time I called you or texted you, all you’d talk about was him. So.”

His mouth drops open, everything about to flood out when the french doors bang open, Chabby’s hand wrapped in a distinctly bloody towel, shouting, “Don’t panic, but we might need to panic!”

-

A trip to the ER and seven stitches later, Chabby is happily jingling a merry bottle of painkillers the entire drive back to the house where he promptly passes out on a lounge chair. Fabbs is stress vaping up a storm while Mat resumes grilling the leftover burger patties. He even manages to rummage up the ingredients to make that aioli Clutter showed him, and his classless friends are dubiously impressed.

“This guy travels abroad one time and suddenly he’s all cultured and shit,” Josty snorts. “Aioli —like, the fuck?”

“It’s like,” Mat rolls his eyes, “not that big of a deal.”

“If it’s something Martha Stewart has a recipe for, it’s a big deal.”

“How _was_ Cali?” Jack—frenemy of a frenemy who is so fucking uptight you’d never guess he always has the best weed—asks. “I hear the girls are...unforgettable.”

“Daisy Dukes,” Josty finishes for him, “Bikinis on top.”

Before they can actually start singing, Mat cuts in, “It was cool. Like, really chill.”

“You were in an AirBnB the whole time?” Jack asks, his cocked eyebrow quietly adding, _that must’ve been fucking expensive._

“No, um,” Mat clears his throat, reaching for his long forgotten drink that’s now mostly just melted iced. “I was in a casita for the first week, then I met up with a friend and I crashed with him and his roommates. Got this super illegal job flipping burgers to pay for it, but like, it was tight.”

Chill, tight, cool—god, what is he, a corporate twitter account trying to appeal to millenials?

“Aioli, casita, breaking the law.” Josty shakes his head. “S’like I don’t even know you anymore, man.”

Mat thinks it would probably bring down the vibe heavily if he replied with, _I don’t really even know myself anymore._

Fabbs is staring at him, though, like he can read Mat’s thoughts through the cloud of vape around his head. “He was rooming with this kid he met on exchange like a million years ago. Like, they ran into each other randomly—dude, tell them.”

Mat twitches. He knows Fabbs is poking at him on purpose, trying to get him to talk, but Fabbs has no clue how deep that wound goes.

“The Instagram kid?” Josty asks through a bite of burger. “That’s crazy! You two meeting up all this time later—like fate some shit.”

“Yeah,” Mat says, and he means for it to sound easy and casual, but there’s a weight piling on behind it, so heavy that he’s pretty sure even Chabby passed out cold a few feet away can pick up on it. So Mat tries to lighten it up with, “He’s really cool—it was like we were kids again.”

“You _are_ still kids,” Fabbs says the exact same moment Josty goes, “You should get him to come up here sometime!”

When Mat can’t make his mouth work fast enough to get some kind of answer out, he can practically hear the collective cogs of their imaginations spinning, probably guessing at something close enough to the truth that Mat’s face burns. He tries, “Yeah, maybe.” But it sounds weak even in his own ears.

“Hold on,” Jack says, and Mat’s heart starts hammering inside his chest, but when he looks over Jack is scrolling through his phone. “We can fucking order a cake from Baskin Robbins on GrubHub. Holy shit, I’m doing it.”

-

Mat’s fine.

He’s not laid up in bed all day with pints of icecream and sad music, closing himself off from the rest of the word. He’s not angry, he’s not devastated, he’s not...anything. He does all the things he has to do, all the things he’s supposed to do, going through all the motions. He helps his mom with her garden, picks up some shifts at his dad’s office doing odd jobs and data entry, gets crushed by his sister at Smash, hangs out with Fabbs, goes to random house parties, showers, sleeps, rinse, repeat.

It’s just kind of...colorless, the vibrancy faded to some pale imitation of the real thing. He laughs, and he jokes, and he’s pretty sure everyone thinks he’s fine. He _is_ fine. 

He still doesn’t try to talk to Beau, and Beau doesn’t try to talk to him. Which is also fine. 

Then he gets really fucking drunk. Like, obliterated. He’s never let himself get this bad, yet there he is, in Chabby’s backyard, half in the bushes, shirt soaked from when he accidentally fell and caught himself on the birdbath. Even obliterated, though, he can still somehow manage to fish his phone out from some pocket and tap at the screen until a call goes through. It goes immediately to voicemail, _The number you have dialed is not available…_

Fabbs’ face suddenly floods his vision, fuzzy at the edges as he asks, “Who the fuck’re you calling?” 

The beep sounds like a tiny ping somewhere distant, and Mat’s mouth is moving before he can stop himself. “Beau—Beau, fuckin’—’m so fuggin sorry, like, no idea how sorry, shit like….god, miss you, and ‘m sorry, an’ I miss you.”

“Christ,” Fabbs sighs somewhere near him.

“An’ I wish you were here,” Mat’s entire face folds, hand coming up to try and hide half of it from whoever might be looking, throat tight. “An’ I wish I didn’ fuck everthing up so fuckin’ bad an I wish I could suck your—”

“Okay!” there a hand suddenly snatches his phone away, blue illuminating Fabbs’ pinched face. “Okay, that’s enough.”

“Fuck you,” Mat says, but there’s no heat behind it. He’s more annoyed at the twig or branch or whatever currently digging into his back than he is at Fabbs. He feels movement next to him, and when he turns his head, Fabbs is lying next to him in the grass, the blur of the party whirling in the distance beyond his profile. Mat squirms, maybe to get more comfortable, maybe to get up. “I...I fucked up, Fabbs. Fucked it all up.”

He can only kind of hear Fabbs. “...probably not that bad…”

“No, I—like, fuck.” He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. It comes out wobbly, he thinks, not even sure if Fabbs can hear him, if Fabbs is even still there. “I love him.”

He passes out at some point. Fabbs might be talking to him. Someone’s hand might be in his hair. He pretends it’s Beau, that they’re on a beach somewhere, that everything’s still okay.

-

He wakes up with the sun, humidity seeping in through his clothes, sticky under the denim jacket someone laid over him. He’s...yup, he stands, and he’s still fucking drunk but, he’s fine. He’s definitely fine, he—

He projectile vomits into Chabby’s mom’s birdbath, gripping the edge to keep from falling over. He gives one last good heave and spit before slumping down onto the grass and turning over onto his back. Fuck.

He can’t just die in the backyard, so he wobbles up onto his feet and heads towards the patio, doors still unlocked from the night before. There are people passed out in various spots, draped over sofas and chairs, people using balled up hoodies and decorative pillows to sleep on the floor. Chabby’s snoring loudly from where he’s passed out on top of the kitchen island, Mat snorting to himself as he grabs for the fridge door. Sweet Christ, there’s gatorade. He chugs it, half of it dribbling down the front of his shirt, but it’s too good to stop.

“Hey.”

He looks up Fabbs padding down from the upstairs in his clothes from last night, rumpled with pillow creases across his face. His eyes won’t settle on one thing, and he doesn’t seem sure of what he wants to do before he settles on grabbing a box of Cap’n Crunch from the cabinet and stuffing his hand in.

“Dude,” Mat rasps. “Gross.”

“S’fine,” Fabbs shrugs, dropping a handful into his mouth. There’s a beat of quiet munching, then, “You okay?”

Mat sways on spot, and leans against the counter to steady himself. “Yeah, m’good.”

Fabbs squints. “Still drunk?”

“Lil bit, yeah.”

Another beat, then, “Want a ride home? I’m good to drive.”

Mat steals another gatorade. “Let’s go.”

Fabbs has a nice car—the nicest car anyone he knows has, all black Camaro with black leather interior. Mat slides in and it feels like butter, warm from the sun but not oppressively hot this early in the morning. Fabbs turns down the stereo and glides through the streets so slow and easy Mat’s almost asleep again when he says, “You were pretty rough last night.”

“Mm,” Mat hums, pressing his forehead against the window.

“Like,” they roll up to a stop sign. There’s no one else on the road, and Fabbs puts the car in park. “You never get like that. And fuckin’ whatever, everyone has their shit nights, but you...are you okay? Seriously.”

Mat stares out at the quiet street, not a soul outside this early on a Sunday morning. Clean cut squares of green lawns, white mailboxes no one steals Bed Bath and Beyond coupons out of, no ocean just a few blocks away. His eyes slip shut.

“And like, when you called him—”

Mat whips his head up, frowning as he turns to look at Fabbs. “What?”

Fabbs’ face goes purposefully blank. “Um.”

“I—” but Mat’s already patting down his clothes “Where—”

Fabbs reaches into his pocket. “I had to take it from you.”

Mat reaches over to take the phone back. He stares down at the blank screen, battery on 1%, taps at the phone icon and sees his last outgoing call. He squints. “I called Hallsy?”

Fabbs frowns. “The singer?”

“No, my friend—well like, I don’t think he likes me, and like, he’s kind of a dick, but…” Mat‘s eyebrows draw together. “Why the fuck would I call him?”

“Uh.” Fabbs looks forward again. “You were trying to call Beau. I thought you did—you left this message—”

“I left a message?” Mat bulges. “What the fuck did I say?”

“It wasn’t you saying anything, so much as you uh, crying it?”

“Fuck,” Mat hisses, sliding down in his seat. “Fuck, shit.”

“Isn’t it better this way?” Fabbs asks, pulling the car back into drive. “Maybe he won’t say anything if you ask, and Beau won’t ever know.”

Mat takes the spare hoodie that’s on the floor by his feet, and screams into it.

-

He spends most of that day grossly sick and waffling back and forth on whether or not he should call Hallsy or at least text him and beg him in a not-super-obvious way to please, please, please god almighty do not play Beau that voicemail.

He pukes, he wrestles through a thin, sweaty nap that’s rooted in conscious thought mixed with ghost-like dreams. He pukes again, and the only thing that doesn’t make his stomach roll with disgust at the thought of even being near is the bag of semi-stale oyster crackers in the pantry.

He finally composes, _Hey, its barz. sorry for calling you last night & leaving that message. I would really appreciate it if you please didn’t tell tito._ His thumb hovers for a good minute before he squeezes his eyes shut and hits send.

A message pops up in seconds. _not sure where you think you get off fucking him over so like? fuck you???_

Mat’s thumbs fly. _You don’t even fuckin like beau so why the fuck do you care_

_mayb but you also pissed ebs off so i literally do not give any fraction of a shit_

Mat hits the call button, and Hallsy picks up on the first ring. “Yo, why can’t you just—”

“Did you deep throat a cactus?” Hallsy cuts him off. “You sound like shit.”

“You sound like shit,” Mat fires back, voice cracking. “And I tried to apologize to Ebs but he won’t answer.”

“Well yeah,” Hallsy says. “He’s so pissed he won’t even tell me what you said. He almost made a full human expression when I asked him about it.”

“I fucking know, okay?” Mat’s voice shakes. “I get it—I know he hates me. I feel like shit about it.”

“Wow, someone doesn’t like you, Mat—boo-fucking-hoo,” Hallsy snaps. “Stop being so dramatic. _No one_ likes me, but you don’t fucking see me ruining my life over it.”

Mat drags a hand down his face, trying desperately to not sound as pathetic as he feels. “I know I fucked up, I know, but I...please don’t tell Beau. Please.”

There’s a beat, and for a second Mat thinks just maybe that he’s done the impossible, that he’s convinced Taylor Hall to go against every one of his natural asshole instincts, but then he says, “It’s too late.”

Mat ends the call without another word and smashes his phone against the door so hard the screen shatters.

-

He is not in the mood to go to any party, much less a party being thrown for him by his mom, full of all his family members coming to ask him a trillion and one questions about school, his plans, if he’s seeing anyone. But he figures he kind of owes it to her, after fucking off for most of the summer without any real plan, not telling her anything, and probably driving her crazy with worry. He leaves in just over a week, so he sucks it the fuck up and wears the shirt she tells him he looks nice in and tries not the outwardly mope.

“When was the last time you slept?” Fabbs asks him. 

“I’m fine,” Mat mumbles into the rim of his soda, because he’s still not comfortable enough to just grab a beer in front of his family.

“That’s not what I asked. Dude.” Fabbs ducks in, voice low. “I thought maybe you’d get better after a couple weeks, but you just seem worse. You mom asked me if you were just nervous about school and I had to lie and say yeah.”

Mat’s chest clenches. 

“You gotta call him, text him, whatever,” Fabbs says, hand on Mat’s shoulder. 

“What would I even say?” Mat asks back, voice thin.

“You could start with, I’m sorry I’m an asshole.”

Mat whips around, eyes burning. He can’t feel any other part of his body—not his probably shaking hands or his screaming heart or his tight throat. He’s not even sure that there’s solid ground beneath him. The only thing he knows is that Beau is there, in front of him, looking like he just walked out of Mat’s sunkissed memories. His face is trying so hard for blank and indifferent, but Mat can see a thousand and one emotions flickering through the depths of his huge eyes. He can’t be real, Mat thinks. 

Mat swallows, blinking rapidly. “What…how….”

“Hi,” is all Beau offers, a smile breaking through, small and barely formed, but there. Undeniably there. Mat crumbles, not caring who can see, falling forward and pulling Beau tight against him, arms squeezing and face buried in the crook of Beau’s neck. He breathes in, and his exhale almost cracks into a sob at the warm, bright smell of home.

He can just barely hear his sister say, “Some serious Nora Ephron shit.”

-

“I got the boys to pitch in,” Fabbs says with a shrug, herding Mat back over towards the stone firepit. “We kind of owed you for ditching.”

Mat’s head is still spinning, and it spins faster once he sees Ebs walking over from the buffet spread with a mountain of macaroni salad. His eyes burn, and he knows everyone is staring but he can’t stop looking at Beau, like if he blinks Beau might disappear. 

He’s not disappearing. This isn’t a dream. Beau is really there, flesh and bone and bad facial hair, being roped into the buffet line by Mat’s mom, who is piling two plastic plates up with food, talking animatedly while Beau nods and grins so simply, like he didn’t just undo Mat’s entire being with one look. Unease wiggles under his skin, wondering what his mom might say, what questions she might ask.

“So,” Ebs brings his attention back around, plopping down in the chair next to Mat and talking through a mouth of macaroni, “you were kind of right.”

Mat stares at him.

“I mean,” Ebs swallows. “You were a dick about it, but you were kind of right.”

“I’m so sorry,” Mat says in a rush. “I said it just to be an asshole, and I’m sorry. Like, really fucking sorry.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ebs says, stabbing at his plate. “It was a fucked thing to say, but. Y’know. Now you’re just indebted to me for life. It’s cool.”

Mat grins, so wide his face might break.

-

Eventually the party thins out, his family heading off and his friends trickling away, grabbing leftovers and heading back into the house. Mat keeps getting caught up in sweeping goodbyes and goodlucks with cousins, aunts, uncles, all which feel so unintentionally pointed as Beau picks at his food, pretending not to watch. Mat can practically feel him vibrating with raw nerves even three chairs away. Someone turns down the neverending spotify playlist of country music, heavy smell of blown out citronella candles coating the warm air.

Fabbs has to pretty much bully Ebs back towards the patio, because Ebs can’t take the hint when Fabbs says, “Oh, dude, we should totally go get some ice cream cake.”

Ebs make a face. “I don’t really like icecream.”

“What the fuck do you mean you don’t like ice cream?” Mat stares. “You _love_ milk. Like, to a disturbing degree.”

“Yeah, so?”

Mat nearly explodes. “It’s frozen cream!”

“I still don’t see your point.”

“Maybe you could get some coffee, then,” Fabbs says, sharp, and when Ebs still doesn’t seem to get it, he clears his throat, loudly, trying to nod imperceptibly at Beau and Mat. 

Ebs’ half-lidded gaze flickers from Fabbs, to Mat, to Beau, and back again. “Okay, yeah, let’s go.”

As they get up, Fabbs delivers a swift kick to Mat’s ankle as Beau checks his phone, mouthing _go sit by him_ before lumbering off towards the house through path lined by big, leafy boxed planters. Mat shifts, scooting towards the edge of his chair, then back, gripping the arms in resolve before standing and moving. Beau looks up, watching Mat sit down, expression carefully blank. The fire is an even, perfect gaslit fire, neat flames winding around fake logs. It doesn’t go out until someone turns it off. It doesn’t crackle or smoke, and Bails has never almost fallen into it. It’s just like the rest of the backyard, meticulously manicured by his mom’s steady hand in cleancut lines and corners. 

It’s quiet, muted sounds of leftover guests milling around in the family room through the French doors. Mat swallows, picking at the skin around his nails. Every fear, every agony he’d felt since he got home—he’d been carefully cutting away, bit by bit, until it felt like there was nothing left to him but a weak, empty frame of a person that was in no way prepared for the onslaught of every awful feeling lashing away at him the second he had to let go of Beau. He remembers the first time he wiped out, remembers not know which way was up, feeling like he was burning from the inside out.

He looks up, Beau’s face caught in the firelight, and Mat’s heart flips.

“I’m sorry,” punches it’s way straight from Mat’s chest. “I know I’m really late in saying it, but...I’m sorry.”

Beau asks, not even looking at him, “Were you ever gonna talk to me again?”

Mat pauses, thinks about lying, then says, “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Beau looks up, eyes pinpointed. “Why the fuck did you leave like that, Mat.”

“I thought…” he swallows. “I thought it’d be easier. To just go. I didn’t want to wake you up, and I was...it was gonna hurt so bad to say goodbye.”

“Do you have any idea,” Beau asks, voice wavering, “what it feels like to wake up alone like that? I was gonna drive you to the airport. I was gonna take evey last second I could get with you, and you fucking—you left. Like you didn’t care.”

Mat’s eyes slide shut. “I know. I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t fix it, but I’m sorry.”

“I fucking—” Beau looks up, away, staring out over the dark backyard with hands shoved into his hoodie pockets, leg shaking up and down. “I had this whole speech. I was going to tell you all these things, and I was going to ask if you wanted to fucking try it, do the long distance thing. Even if it sucked, even if it went up in flames, I didn’t—I just wanted you so bad.” 

“I thought…” Mat rasps out, “I thought the night before, you...you were trying to say that it was over.”

Beau’s wide eyes snap around to look at him, so huge they’re sucking in everything in their path. “When the fuck did I ever say that.”

“You didn’t but—” Mat wants to look away, the pure hurt plastered across Beau’s face hitting him like a physical blow. “I thought—”

“Yeah, you thought,” Beau sneers. “You thought I wanted it over. You thought I didn’t care. You thought it was better to just leave. You thought it was better to not fucking text me, or call me, or facetime me or anything.”

“I did try to call,” Mat blurts out. “I just...accidentally called Hallsy instead? And left that awful drunken voicemail on his phone meant for you?”

“Uh.” Beau blinks slowly. “What?”

“I—didn’t he show you?” Mat’s face burns. “He said he showed you.”

“He never showed me any voicemail,” Beau says. “He doesn’t talk to me unless he has to.”

Mat slumps down in his chair, dragging hands over his face. “Jesus fucking Christ, I was losing my goddamn mind over that, and he—god, what an asshole.”

There’s a pause, then Beau asks, “What did you say? In the voicemail.”

Mat peeks an eye open through his parted fingers. Beau at least seems less angry, if not still wary. He rubs at his eyes for a moment before letting his hands fall back onto the arms of his chair, huffing. “Probably how much I missed you. How sorry I was. I don’t really remember the specifics.”

Beau is dead silent for a long, ugly beat. Then, “Can we go for a walk, or something? Ebs is fucking hiding in the bushes behind us.”

“No I’m not—ow!” Ebs’ voice floats up from behind them, underlined by Fabbs hissing _yo, shut the fuck up!_

Mat tries on a smile, surprising himself by how good it feels. “Yeah, I know a place.”

-

The walk to 7-Eleven is kind of a hike on foot, but Mat knows the back way through the overgrown park not far from the main road. It’s mostly silent, neither of them looking at each other, the usual frenzy of raiding the snack aisle replaced with shrugging. Mat wants to try and make a joke about Ebs and taquitos, but he ends up just silently paying for the both of them and leading Beau back the way they came. They take a seat on the swings, the park mostly empty save for a few kids screaming around the jungle gym on the far side, being rounded up by their parents as the sun dips lower.

Say something, Mat’s brain screams. Say literally anything!

He looks at Beau, then squints, eyes falling to a familiar spot at the base of his neck, noticeably bare. “Where’s your necklace?”

Beau clears his throat. “Uh. It’s uh, in the side pocket of your duffle bag.”

Mat’s mouth drops open. “How—”

“I put it in there when you were sleeping the night before, as a...” Beau won’t look at him, slurping loudly at his drink. “I guess you didn’t open it like I thought you would.”

He hasn’t taken anything out of his duffle except the souvenirs he brought home. All his socks are still inside; he’s been wearing nothing but flipflops since he got home. He blinks, not sure how to fit all of that into his brain, how he could’ve missed something like that, how—

“Why?” he breathes out, and the deadpan glare Beau hits him with is so intense it nearly knocks Mat over.

The fireflies are out. Just a few, blinking brightly through the thick grass and wild flowers. The last ones of summer, probably. The swings squeak above head, and Mat knows it’s not as simple as wanting something and having it. He can’t know how things will end up, can’t know how they’ll shift and change, if he’ll feel the same way in a few months from now, in a year from now. If Beau will feel the same, too. If the distance will drag them under, or if time will suffocate them. He can’t know any of that, and it’s terrifying, standing on the edge of something so deep, so dark he’s not sure light can reach it. And even if it can, is he ready for whatever’s waiting for him? Will he even like the person he comes out as on the other side?

But when he looks up at Beau, in this exact moment, in this exact light...it all falls away.

Beau moves to stand. “We should probably—”

Mat grabs his hand, and when their eyes meet he squeezes, and it floods out of him, “I want to try. If you still want to, I want to fucking—I know I don’t deserve it, after everything—shit, I’m fucking this up.”

He clenches his eyes shut, and only opens them again when Beau squeezes his hand back, moving to thread their fingers. Beau says, “You’re doing fine.”

Mat thinks, for a split second, that he shouldn’t say it, but he’s so tired. He’s so tired of not just saying what he wants. He looks up from their joined hands. “God, Beau, I love you.”

Beau’s face breaks open. 

A slurpee hits the sand beneath their feet, and fingers wrap around the back of Mat’s neck, pulling him in like a tide.

-

He asks his mom if Beau can stay the night, and she very carefully says, “We’ll set up the futon downstairs.” He knows when everyone leaves that’s going to result in a very interesting conversation, but Mat’s so fucking happy he doesn’t care.

“Christ,” Beau mutters, arms full of spare sheets and pillows as they head down into the basement. “This is not how I wanted to meet your parents.”

“It’s fine,” Mat says, practically vibrating with happiness. His fingers keep finding the pendant at the hollow of his throat, heavy and unfamiliar. “I just can’t believe you’re actually here.”

Beau’s ears are pink. “Me neither.”

A snort. “I can’t believe Ebs came.”

“I was so nervous,” Beau admits, the way Beau always just admits how he feels, like the words cost him nothing to give away. “So I’m glad he did, even though he was mad at you.”

Mat winces. “Yeah. I told him I was sorry, but, uh, I think I owe him a favor now? So, like, it’s been nice knowing you.”

“Dude,” Beau laughs, “You’re so gonna have to murder someone.”

“You gonna visit me in jail?” Mat asks.

Beau’s smile turns soft. “I’d visit you anywhere.”

****

-epilogue-

“That everything?”

Beau slams the trunk shut. “If it’s not, we’re leaving whatever’s not already in here. Unless you want the wheels to fall off this thing.”

“Can’t believe she made it across the whole country,” Mat says, patting the station wagon’s hood appreciatively.

“I can’t believe it’s so friggin’ hot here,” Beau complains, pulling at the front of his shirt to fan himself. “It’s the northeast—it’s supposed to be cooler than LA.”

Mat shakes his head. “It’s the humidity, man. Cali’s like, a dry heat.”

“Hell island,” Beau says. “This is a hell island.”

Mat huffs out a laugh and looks up at the dorm building, at the window he knows was his. Wind whips through the city streets, warm and heavy with the smell of exhaust and asphalt. It was a shitty room in a shitty building, cramped and cracking at the edges, paying witness to every sleepless night, every drunken text, every homesick hurt and every quiet resolve. He’s going to miss it, kind of, in a way he didn’t think he would.

“We should get going,” Beau says, hand at Mat’s elbow. He’s just as golden as Mat remembers, if a little worn at the edges from driving cross country in five days. From two long years of back and forth, of figuring all their shit out, of aching at phantom touches. “Pretty sure if I stay parked here any longer a traffic cop’s gonna come and like, launch my car into Jersey.”

“You’re fine.” Matt points to the street sign. “It’s a Sunday.”

“That thing’s written in fucking tongues,” Beau grumbles, and lets his head fall against Mat’s shoulder, heavy. 

“Hey,” Mat says softly. He slides his fingers around the back of Beau’s neck, stroking easy fingertips along the warm skin there. “What’s the plan?”

Beau sighs, sagging, breath tickling at the hollow of Mat’s throat, near the gold pendant of his necklace. “You know the plan. We’ve been over the plan.”

“Well, I want to hear it again.” He loves hearing Beau say it. He loves everything about it. They’ve been talking about it since the end of last summer, first in careful, shrugging words, then in quiet earnest during hushed 3am phonecalls, Mat trying not to wake up his roommate. Then in promise, then in reality, Beau finally deciding to make the transfer to Hofstra. 

Beau lifts his head, hair mussed, counting off his fingers. “Okay, one—drive up to Montreal to see my family, and eat a fucking inhuman amount of poutine.”

Mat hooks his fingers through the belt loops of Beau’s jeans, pulling him close. “Obviously. What next?”

“Then we dump your stuff and catch a flight to Vancouver so I can finally defeat your sister in Smash, once and for all.”

“Good fucking luck, but sure. Next.”

“Fly down to Malibu for Marty’s wedding.”

“Allegedly.”

“Barzy, c’mon, we’ve been over this—it’s happening for fucking sure this time. Last year was just a fluke.”

“Earthquakes are just a fluke. Food poisoning is just a fluke,” Mat says. “Accidentally renting a venue run by a cult is not _just a fluke.”_

“Oh my god,” Beau groans. “It was a ranch with a Facebook page—how the hell were they supposed to know?”

“It was called the Wayward Soul Sanctuary and Infinite Lifeforce Chapel—how the hell did they _not_ know it was run by a cult?” Mat points out. “And the fact that Bails was the one who found it should’ve been an immediate red flag.”

Beau give him a look like he knows Mat’s right, but would rather choke before admitting it. “Then we fly back to Montreal, get my car, drive to Queens, and move into our new place.”

Our new place. Mat still isn’t fucking over it. “That’s a lot, for one summer.”

“It is a lot,” Beau agrees, nodding. “But we can do it. We always have.”

“We always have,” Mat echoes. “You’re forgetting something, though.”

Beau cocks an eyebrow, and Mat tilts his head towards the car, slipping the keys from Beau’s hand.

-

The congested roads lined by cramped buildings and smoggy storefronts eventually give way to the winding hellscape known as the Southern State, three twisty lanes headed east around suddenly sharp bends and trash cluttered shoulders. Then suddenly, it all blows open, wide and bright, land dissolving into a patchwork of sun dappled water and bursts of marshlands. Time is suspended in the glow of late afternoon, all the windows rolled down the the radio churning out crackling oldies as they coast over tiny ramshackle bridge that rattles the whole car.

Beau squints against the sun. “What is that? Is that a fucking obelisk?”

Mat looks over at the towering brick landmark coming into view, stark against the flat backdrop. “I think it’s a water tower.” 

“Dude, no it’s not—when the fuck have you ever seen a water tower look like that?”

As they round the traffic circle and head onto a clean stretch of open parkway, Beau starts smiling and doesn’t stop. Not even when they have to change into board shorts in the cramped sandy bathrooms near the closed concession stand, wetsuits lost in the trashbags of clothes stuffed into the backseat. And okay, Jones Beach probably isn’t as nice as Litore, tucked 3,000 miles away in a corner of the globe where it literally never rains, but the sun feels the same, and the heavy smell of summer is on every breath that fills him.

The water’s freezing, and the swell’s kind of mushy, but they’re laughing loud enough that it booms down the coast, far enough to touch the sunset. Mat still wobbles when he hops up, still wipes out if he tries to do anything fancier than glide. Still loves just watching Beau, moving like he’s part of every wave he catches. 

“It’s getting late,” Beau says eventually, raking his wet hair back, the two of them taking a breather on the sand. He’s got water caught in his eyelashes, dripping off the tip of his nose, around the shape of his mouth that Mat has spent so many nights committing to memory.

Mat should agree, should say it’s time to head back, to dry off and pack up and start the long drive towards the border, towards everything else that’s about to come their way.

“A little longer,” Mat tells him. “Just a little.”

Beau grins, leaning in. 

When they kiss, it’s in the reach of sunlight that touches every part of him, inside and out.

end.

**Author's Note:**

> asaaahahakaja this was only supposed to be like 5k max but then the need to write ~soft summer vibes overtook me
> 
> thanks so much for reading


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